Le Castella

Le Castella is a hamlet of the promontory Isola di Capo Rizzuto in the province of Crotone in Calabria. In the part east of the town of Le Castella there are two ports, a marina and a fishing port. The fishing port has two piers, a large and a smaller one: on the larger one fishing boats or boats that have a very deep hull are moored, and on the smaller one there are gangways dedicated to mooring tourist or pleasure boats. The smaller pier is also called the Madonnina pier.

The marina is used by private boats with a draft of no more than 2 meters and a maximum length of 18 meters and is located in an inlet opposite the town. The marina is bounded by a small under-billow pier and a curvilinear over-billow pier. To the north is a dock well sheltered from all winds, where, however, only boats with a maximum draft of 2 meters can be moored. The part of the water bounded by the two docks is affected by the undertow when there is a sea from the southeast. When there is an undertow, care must be taken; at the entrance to the north dock, one must keep to the left, carefully avoiding the shallows and rocks that are at the starboard entrance.

Access to Le Castella Marina is allowed from dawn to dusk, and in the fall there are frequent dangerous easterly and sirocco swells. During the rest of the year the winds are fairly weak, with the exception of the libeccio. Walking around the entire perimeter of the marina, one reaches a very important area from an archaeological point of view. The route of the Greek Quarries is very famous, because since ancient times stone has been the main material for the construction of architectural works.

In the area between Le Castella and Crotone there were numerous quarries used since the time of the colonization of the Achaeans, and in the area of the new marina there is still a large area where you can see the square and circular cuts used to extract rock to build the Greek buildings that are throughout the area. Near the port heading north there are still the remains of ancient medieval walls dating back to the time of the first construction of the village built on top of ancient Greek walls.

Even today there are the remains of a gate used as a lookout point on the edge of the promontory Le Castella, because in this inlet near the sea, attacks by enemies were frequent. Damage from a famous 2013 storm surge can be seen in this video.