“The Hundred Steps”: The Staircase Through the Mediterranean Scrub

What Is the “Centu Scali” Staircase and Where Is It?

In 2022, an enterprising association from Scilla, Calabria Wild Wine, “adopted” the historic staircase that winds down from the San Giorgio neighborhood toward Chianalea, the fishermen’s village. It’s a shortcut offering a view of the sea of extraordinary beauty. Armed with time and good will, the volunteers cleared the steps of vegetation and trash that had accumulated over the years, making them passable once again. But they didn’t stop there: their new idea was to transform the staircase into a botanical and educational trail, introducing adults and children alike to the wonders and scents of the Mediterranean scrub.

Why It’s Special: The Mediterranean Scrub

And so, the association’s volunteers are restoring the existing plants— holm oak, euphorbia, caper, and buckthorn —and planting others— olive, prickly pear, broom, arbutus, myrtle, juniper, and rosemary… They’re creating an oasis of biodiversity, a welcoming ecosystem for many species of butterflies, insects, and birds. Along the low wall, beneath each plant, plaques in Italian and English provide basic botanical information, history, uses, and a few interesting facts… In essence, they teach us how to see.

“To know is to recognize”

As we slowly make our way down the low steps with their tight turns, we learn many things. For example, that the Greeks and Romans already used broom to make ropes and mats, and that the ancient Phoenicians also enjoyed zibibbo wine; or that the Greeks wore rosemary wreaths on their heads to aid complex reasoning! We discover that capers are not fruits but buds, and that by carving into the trunkof the manna ash, one can extract manna, a natural sweetener. That the spurge awakens between winter and spring and sheds its leaves in summer, and that there is an ancient and rare variety of white olive tree, the leucolea, from which chrism oil has been extracted since ancient times. And the rest… we’ll leave that for you to discover!

Fun Facts

The “Centu Scali” aren’t actually a hundred, but a whopping 175! Low and easy to climb, luckily for us!