Luxury hotel holidays to Calabria

An Expressions tailor-made holiday to Calabria offers a traditional, magical glimpse of Italy that few visitors get to see. Historically one of Italy's poorest regions, Calabria - the toe of Italy - is a startlingly dramatic place, peppered with stunning hilltop towns that seem to grow right out of the rugged, craggy mountaintops. Formerly the site of rich and powerful Greek settlements, Calabria today is scattered with impressive ruins, and even shelters the odd Greek-speaking village and Albanian communities dating back over 500 years. But historically fascinating as the regions is, its great ancient cities such as Magna Graecia have all but disappeared, vanquished by centuries of fighting and conquest, malaria and earthquakes. Today, it is the region's nearly 500-mile coastline that attracts most visitors, with wonderful, wide beaches and secluded coves lapped by the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas. Inland, Calabria offers superb scenery for walkers and explorers, particularly around La Sila, a breathtakingly dramatic, high-level plain with lakes, snow-capped summits and ancient woodland. Here you'll be able to admire the giganti della Sila, trees which are over 500 years old, six feet across and 130 feet tall, or ride the unforgettably panoramic narrow-gauge railway between Cosenza and San Giovanni in Fiore. A remote land, Calabria is full of unexpected beauty, and wherever you stay here, a drive down the south coast to Capo Colonna is a must. Here, formerly the site of a temple to Hera known throughout the ancient land, a single column sitting at the very edge of the Ionian Sea stands as a devastatingly haunting, wildly romantic metaphor for the entire region.