The park tells the story of Skylletion, the city of Magna Grecia, which became a prosperous Roman colony, Scolacium.
The area, now expropriated, was part of the possessions of the Mazza barons and, before that, of the Massara di Borgia, owners of a company for the production of oil.
The site is immersed in a centuries-old olive grove which constitutes the green lung of the province of Catanzaro.
The findings in the Park area testify to a frequentity since the lower and upper Paleolithic. Little known is the Greek settlement.
The Scolacium Archaeological Park is a place of extraordinary landscape charm and important monumental value, a site of excellence in the entire southern area; Magna Graecia colony, Roman, then Norman settlement, in a vast secular olive grove.
It is located in a slight hill that slopes down to the sea and just 200 meters as the crow flies from the white Ionian beach, in the bourgeois territory adjacent to that of the regional capital; in an area with a high tourist vocation and 20 minutes from Lamezia Terme, Calabria's most important airport and railway hub.
Legend has it that Menestheus, king of Athens, was the ecologist of Skylletion; in reality the foundation dates back to the 6th-5th century BC. by Greek colonists from Athens or Crotone. The chosen place, located along the route of the isthmus, on the Ionian coast and in defense of the Gulf of Squillace, was strategic for the control of land and river routes and for trade with the entire Mediterranean basin.
The Roman colony of Scolacium, with its imposing remains, is the protagonist of the visit route and represents a unicum in the Calabrian archaeological panorama. Deduced in 123-122 BC, it was affected by interventions of arrangement of the urban part and the whole territory through the division of the cultivable plots (centuriation).
Nervia Augusta Scolacium and was further monumentalized. Today it is possible to visit the Forum, with its singular brick pavement that has no equal in the whole Roman world and the remains of some buildings, including the Curia, the Cesareum and the Capitolium.
Archaeological Park and Museum of Scolacium
Address: Strada Statale 106 Jonica, 88021, Catanzaro
Phone: 0961 391356
Site:
https://www.armoniedarte.com/Location inserted by
Bonometti Paola