A paradise inhabited by devils.

Cortale, Calabria, Italy

The village of Cortale rises among the soft hills of plain of Lamezia Terme.

Its streets seem drawn by the wind—lanes that rise, fall, and weave together like threads on a loom. And it’s no coincidence, because Cortale is a land of weavers and skilled hands, of looms that for centuries have beaten like slow, precise hearts.

Here, among the fields, the grace of the mulberry trees survives—humble, precious trees. Their leaves feed the silkworms, and the silkworms gift their silk: a tradition born centuries ago, when Calabria was a quiet kingdom of sericulture.

Today, surprisingly, it is the younger generations who have embraced it once again, as if in those shining threads they had found a way to tie the past to the future, turning an ancient craft into a new promise.

Cortale is a threshold place, between the Ionian and the Tyrrhenian, between countryside and hills, between memory and what has yet to happen. At sunset, the light glides over the rooftops like a silk veil, while from the fields comes the smell of damp grass and freshly baked bread.

Here, every step tells a story:

the rock emerging between the walls,

the quiet of the squares,

the looms that still whisper softly,

the hills shifting color with the seasons.

In Cortale you understand that Calabria is not just a place, but a way of feeling: a weave of history and breath, a gentle kind of melancholy that settles on your shoulders and reminds you—like a thread of silk—where you come from.

Folding Fan with a Representation of the 1806 Eruption of Mount Vesuvius

Italian