Costa Viola, jewel of Tyrrhenian Calabria

What is and where is the Purple Coast

Purple, like the color of the sky at twilight, of the sea that makes its reflections its own, and of the high coastline that absorbs the reverberation of both modulating it into still different hues. The first to describe the excitement of this moment, according to hagiographers, was none other than the philosopher Plato, one who was familiar with the hyperuranium. Since Magna Graecia, nothing would have changed, were it not for the lights that more suggestively now permeate the coast and dot the sea. Some 30 kilometers of impervious Tyrrhenian coastline, set like a precious stonebetween the promontory of Scilla and that of Palmi, against the looming backdrop of Aspromonte. This is the Costa Viola in today's terms, a landscape that outside of rhetoric has no equal.

Why it is special: the Costa Viola as seen from the sea.

Sailing one has the best perception of it: almost always rocky sea, except for the beaches that stretch out at the mouth of the Fiumare, but then also inaccessible cliffs that hide caves and secret coves among their folds . But it is beneath the surface that the sea hides even more surprising landscapes, rugged seabeds and vertical drops, real forests of gorgonians and corals lapped by the currents of the Strait. And when you look at the open waters, here is their most illustrious frequenter, the swordfish, generator of a fishing tradition exclusive to the two shores of the Strait, mentioning only the cetaceans - dolphins, sperm whales, minke whales, the most usual - that cross between the Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas.