Landscape, nature and environment in the province of Cosenza
The territory of the province of Cosenza occupies almost all the North Central area of Calabria: from East (Ionian coast) to West (Tyrrhenian coast), from North (the Pollino massif) to South (the Sila Grande plateau). The territory also features some plains (the Sibari plain), great valleys (the Crati valley) and hills such as the ones that slope away towards north and east from the Greek Sila.
The vastness of the territory makes up for the variety of landscapes, and this is not only due to the presence of both seaside and mountains. Some pieces of coast are very different one another within the same coastline. Similarly, massifs are different one another. The fact that visitors are puzzled and confused about the whole thing contribute to making the landscape of the province of Cosenza extremely enchanting.

Whoever goes down Calabria through the motorway, after the Campotenese mountain pass, is suddenly captivated by the inaccessible ridges that reascend on the left side of the road along the slopes of Conca del Re and towards the steep gullies, rocky edges, arrogant crags and serrated ridges surmounted by the crests of the Pollino and the Dolcedorme. When beamed by the sunset light, these inaccessible mountains seem a Mediterranean reproduction of the Rocky Mountains or the Dolomites because of their chalky faces, rocky pinnacles, broadleaved woods that stretch on their sides and conifers situated on the highest altitudes. Mario Cappelli named them "bluegray or pinkviolet cathedrals", while Norman Douglas, in his "Old Calabria", wrote that "these exquisite mountains evaporate, towards sunset, in an amethystine haze".
If you clamber up to the top of the Pollino over one of the routes once used by shepherds, farmers and woodcutters, you will feel like being in an exotic location. And if you are lucky enough to hear the big wings of a golden eagle whistling in the wind, then the picture is almost complete. Almost because one element is still missing, the 'pino loricato', a great conifer that is the symbol of these mountains; the oldest specimens of this variety of pine date back to millenniums ago and they resemble a huge armoured warrior.
In the eastern part of the Pollino we find the "timpe", impressive rocky mountains whose shapes can be compared to huge trihedrons, oblique walls or great petrified waves; at their feet, impetuous rivers like the Raganello flow free. Throughout millenniums, the erosive fury of these rivers dug canyons enclosed by high and polished rocky faces.
As if by magic, beyond the massif's main ridge there are the Pollino's timeless plains, a big hollow surrounded by the most important peaks of the massif. Douglas highly recommended that everyone who would come to this remote regions should visit the plains.
In addition to the Pollino in the strict sense (which gives its name to the national park) there is another Pollino, less famous but perhaps more precious for holding pure wild habitats and creatures that you cannot find anywhere else, like the elusive and rare Apennine roe deer: the Orsomarso mountains or Dorsale del Pellegrino (pilgrim's ridge).
This land was so primordially wild that Duret de Tavel in his book "Calabria during a military residence of three years: in a series of letters" defined it "a vast, lonely region, abandoned to birds of prey, to wolves and wild boars". This is the long mountain ridge that from the Campotenese mountain pass descends obliquely towards the Tyrrhenian coast and down to the Passo dello Scalone. Here the chalky rock predominates too and adding to the Pollino's carsic phenomena new caves, sinkholes, huge dolines like the one in the Piano Grande (‘big plateau’), a majestic concavity bordered by stony mountains (on one of them a great natural arch stands out) and covered by evergreen prairies where hundreds of wild boars pasture.
The Orsomarso features dark and impenetrable forests, mountains like Montea and Cozzo del Pellegrino where no human sign of life is visible, fluvial ravines like the Argentino's, canyons which are even longer and more complex than the Lao's, an old caravan road that is now walked by canyonists and canoe and rafting lovers.
At the feet of the Pollino's Southern side there is a hollow where the municipalities of Morano and Castrovillari are located. According to Giuseppe Isnardi, this is like a great sequence of pictures by Poussin. It resembles a big fan opening around the river Coscile and slowly enlarging towards the Sibari plateau which was once infested by marshlands. The above mentioned de Tavel wrote that this was the ideal place for great huntings, whereas nowadays it is covered by wide orchards and farmlands.
The Coscile is tributary to the Crati, the "blond" river according to classic tradition. At the mouth of the Crati was situated the old town of Sibari which was renowned for the refinement of its inhabitants. The town was so rich, sumptuous and vigorous that the Abbot of Saint Non compared it to the garden of the Hesperides. The plateau draws on the cost the Arch of Sybaris (as it has been recently named), a gulf inside another gulf (the gulf of Taranto), a perfect semicircle admirable from the hills of Trebisacce and Albidona.
These hills hold one of the oldest rural landscapes in the South of Italy, dominated by Aleppo pine spots and cornfields, millenary olive tree groves stretching over the sunny slopes, pebbly torrent beds running out, isolated oaks standing out all of a sudden. On the other hand the beaches, unusually pebbly, gather in almost from the foreshore the pinewoods' last branches. The latters are brightened up by gnus-castus shrubs, bright lilac oleanders and pale yellow poppies in the sand.

Offshore the municipality of Amendolara there is a large shoal whose wonderful seabeds, in the collective imagination, were created by a pile of rubble left by Dionysius the Elder's fleet which was sank during a storm in 379 BC.
In the middle of the Arch of Sybaris wedges itself the river Crati. The latter and the neighbouring Lake of Tarsia (along the path of the river, further up) make up one of the major wet zones in Calabria. Surrounded by alders, poplars and willows - what remains of an old hygrophilous wood - the river's mouth and the lake are now a safe harbour (a regional nature reserve has now been established) to thousands of water birds and to one of the last surviving colonies of sea otters.
Further up, beyond Tarsia's narrow passage, the Crati - the longest river in Calabria - winds its way through the former "Vallo del Crati", a broad valley filled with built up areas but also embellished with wide orchards, loans, clumps of trees and, more importantly, surrounded by green and vigorous hills ascending west towards the Orsomarso and east towards the Greek Sila. In his book "Calabria Felix", Dominique Vivant Denon emphasises the big differences between Calabria and the shores of the rivers Loire or Seine.
Between the Crati and the southernmost part of the Ionian coast of the province of Cosenza is the Greek Sila, the north-eastern part of the plateau. The Greek Sila features hills, villages of Albanian origins, sparse oak woods and then mountain sides filled up with chestnut trees. At the peak of this orographical pyramid rises the Monte Peleparto, covered by thick pinewoods.
However, the deep river incisions which line radially the Greek Sila hold the naturalistic treasures of this portion of land: the geological gardens that are formed to fill considerable drops in a little space create thunderous waterfalls like the Cerasia's, Colognati's and Laurenzana's; big oaks support unstable rock lumps with their gnarled roots; great gorges, like the Vulganera's, Trionto's or Ortiano's make their way through the mountains and gurgle towards the coast in their crystalline colour. On the mountain sides of Cozzo del Pesco, in the inland of Rossano, there is a monumental wood characterised by about one hundred chestnut trees and maples dating back to more than 800 years ago and with a girth of more than 9 metres. These huge trees with hollow trunks, vigorous branches and gnarled roots were possibly bed out by Byzantine monks who populated the neighbouring and famous Monastery of Patirion.
The Passo dello Scalone marks the boundary between the Orsomarso and the Catena Costiera (coastal chain), the latter stretching parallel to the Tyrrhenian coast and taking the name of Serre cosentine on the Eastern side. This long mountain ridge is covered by thick oak forests, chestnut and beech trees and divides the opposite valleys of Crati and Savuto from the coast. Soft and woody mountains come one after another and are interrupted by little stretches of water like the Laghicello (little lake) and the Lago dei due Uomini (Two men's lake) where the rare Alpine newt still survives.
On the other hand, in the southern part there is a complex group of mountains having the most picturesque shapes: Pietra Longa, Pietra Ferruggia and the mountain that Giuseppe Isnardi compared to a hairless trihedron, Monte Cocuzzo. It is, indeed, a vigorous chalky mountain whose top stands out and is visible also from a long distance; from there you can enjoy one of the largest and most spectacular views in the South of Italy.
The Catena Costiera's ridge used to be the natural barrier travellers had to overcome in order to move from the Tyrrhenian coast to the inner part of the province; in particular, along the most-trodden route which connected the town of Paola to Cosenza. And those who took this tortuous route were wholly bewitched by the sea suddenly revealing itself from inside the woods: Astolphe de Custine, in her "Lettere dalla Calabria" (Letters from Calabria) wrote that the shining blue sea she saw at her feet was an overturned sky and George Gissing pointed out "through mists that floated far below I looked over miles of shore, and outward to the ever-rising limit of sea and sky".

There it is, finally, the overturned sky. Leonida Rapaci described it as a sea tossed by deep green and blue currents. It is the same sea in which Alberto Moravia saw a mythical and primordial beauty.
The coastline at this point is called "Riviera dei Cedri" (citrons' coastline) because of this particular citrus (the citron) which is naturally present in the area and used to prepare drinks and candied fruits. This long straight portion of the coast, in line for becoming a marine reserve, is an alternation of cliffs (like Fiuzzi's cliff or the Rizzi's cliff), narrow beaches, coves and rocks.
Offshore there are two little islands covered by myrtle spots and euphorbias, clumps of holm oaks, specimens of dwarf palms and the rare primulas of Palinuro, overflown by steep chalky cliffs between vivid yellow and ochre tones, bordered at its base by marine caves faintly illuminated by thousands of iridescences, surrounded by wonderful seabeds home to sea fans and daisies, corals and neptune grasses, octopi and groupers, moray eels and tubeworms.
But the most legendary and evocative place in the whole province of Cosenza is the Sila Grande, that is to say the geographical and historical heart of the Sila plateau.
Mentioned by Virgil in its Aeneid and Georgics and enhanced by Dionysius of Halicarnassus for its extraordinary natural resources, the Sila Grande is situated between the opposite valleys of Crati and Savuto in the west and the sub-region of Marchesato in the east. It is an enormous forest covered by beeches and larch pines (but also maples, white spruces and aspens) at its top, by turkey oaks, chestnut trees and alders in the middle and filled up with large pastures. All in all, the Sila Grande is an authentic labyrinth of airy valleys and mountain ridges; its Nordic look forced travellers and describers into the most various combinations: it was Scandinavia to Guido Piovene, Scotland and Siberian Taiga to Norman Douglas.
The lakes created at the beginning of the XX century by damming up the rivers Mucone, Neto, Arvo, Savuto and Passante are beautifully set in the middle of the great Sila valleys, whereas at the edges of the plateau wild fluvial ravines hit the mountains' sides through sparkling water games and wonderful rock architectures.

Francesco Bevilacqua