Lungomare Falcomatà

The Lungomare Falcomatà is Reggio di Calabria's seafront promenade, named after a former mayor, stretching for several kilometres along the Strait of Messina. Lined with palms, oleanders, magnolias, and specimen trees brought from around the world in the nineteenth century, it is the social centre of the city — where Reggio comes to walk in the evenings, to see and be seen, to push prams and walk dogs and sit on benches facing Sicily.

The strait here is only three kilometres wide at its narrowest, and on clear days you can see individual buildings on the Sicilian shore. Ferries cross continuously to Messina. In the mornings, the light off the water is extraordinary. The promenade runs past the main port, connects the castle in the south to the museum in the north, and is the most pleasant way to navigate between the city's principal sights.

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A story
Gabriele D'Annunzio, the flamboyant Italian poet and nationalist who visited Reggio in the early twentieth century, called the Lungomare the most beautiful kilometre in Italy. He was probably exaggerating — he was that kind of poet — but the view from the promenade at dusk, with Sicily lit up across the water and Etna occasionally smoking on the horizon, is genuinely difficult to improve upon.

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