Overview
Locri Epizefiri was an important city of Magna Graecia, whose excavations have yielded an extraordinary amount of precious artefacts. The archaeological area is located in the heart of the Calabrian Locride, along the Costa dei Gelsomini. According to Aristotle, the city was founded in the late 8th century by servants from the Greek Locride, who fled with the wives of their masters engaged in war. Locri Epizephyrii was the birthplace of Zeleucus, to whom we owe the first European code of written law, and the poetess Nossis. It reached its greatest expansion in the 6th-5th centuries and in 205 BC entered the Roman orbit. In the 7th-8th centuries, plagued by Arab raids, it was abandoned: according to legend, refugees founded Gerace (in fact a settlement had existed since the Neolithic) led by a sparrowhawk.
The archaeological area of Locri Epizefiri, covering more than 230 hectares, it presents the public part of the city (with agora and temples) upstream, the artisanal and residential areas are downstream. You can admire the magnificent theatre of a typical Greek model, the sandstone walls, the sanctuary of Aphrodite and that of Persephone. From the ruins of the Ionic temple originate the famous Dioscuri, preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria. The local archaeological museum houses hundreds of artefacts found in excavations, including votive tablets (pinakes) from the 5th century BC and funerary items found in the necropolis.
