Calabria and the Strait of Messina, Italy's toe

On the map, Calabria is the toe of the Italian boot, a long, mountainous peninsula between the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Ionian, ending a few kilometres short of Sicily. In most travellers' minds it is the stretch of motorway between Naples and the ferry. That is a pity, because it is one of the least visited and most interesting regions in Italy: a land of steep coasts and forested mountains, of hill towns that look as if they have not changed for centuries, and of a Greek past older than Rome's.

Its people are known for their hospitality and their chillies, its food for being some of the plainest and best in the south, and its coast, on the Tyrrhenian side especially, for cliffs, coves and towns on rocks above the sea.

The Tyrrhenian coast

The road south runs along the Tyrrhenian shore, and two of its towns are worth stopping for. Diamante, in the north of the region, is a fishing town on the coast below the mountains. Further south, Pizzo sits on a cliff above a small harbour, with a castle on the edge of the rock. It was in this castle, in October 1815, that Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law and the former King of Naples, was held after a doomed attempt to win back his throne, and shot. Pizzo's other claim is gentler: it is the home of the tartufo, a ball of ice cream with a soft centre, dusted in cocoa, which every café in the main square claims to make best.

The bronzes of Riace

At the very tip of the toe, Reggio Calabria looks across the strait to Sicily, and in its archaeological museum, the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia, are two of the finest Greek sculptures to survive anywhere. The Riace Bronzes are two warriors, larger than life, made in the fifth century BC and found by chance in 1972 by a swimmer who saw an arm sticking out of the sand on the seabed off Riace, on the Ionian coast. They are naked, bearded and astonishingly present, and they are the reason many people come to Reggio at all.

They are also a reminder of what Calabria was. The Greeks settled this coast from the eighth century BC, and the whole of southern Italy became Magna Graecia, Greater Greece, with cities as rich as any in the Greek world.

Scylla and Charybdis

The Strait of Messina is narrow, about three kilometres at its narrowest point, between Torre Faro on the Sicilian side and the Calabrian shore near Villa San Giovanni, and its currents, where two seas meet, are strong and changeable. The Greeks put monsters here. In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus has to steer between Scylla, a six-headed creature in a cave on one side, and Charybdis, a whirlpool on the other. The town of Scilla, on the Calabrian shore, still keeps the name, with a castle on its rock and a fishing quarter at its foot, and there is a whirlpool in the north of the strait that has been linked to the legend.

The crossing today is by ferry, from Villa San Giovanni or Reggio to Messina, and it takes a short while. Messina itself was devastated by the earthquake and tsunami of 1908, which killed tens of thousands of people, and much of what you see was built afterwards, so it is a newer city than its long history suggests. Beyond it, along the coast, are Taormina, on its terrace high above the sea with its Greek theatre and the view of Etna, and Giardini Naxos below, on the site of Naxos, the oldest Greek colony on the island.

Tours that join the two

Travelsphere's ten-night The Soul of Southern Italy - Puglia, Calabria & Sicily is built around this journey south. It begins in Puglia, with Ostuni, Alberobello and its trulli, Cisternino and Locorotondo, then Matera, before crossing Calabria, with Diamante and Pizzo, to Messina and Sicily, where it reaches Giardini Naxos, the hill village of Savoca and Taormina.

Travelsphere's fourteen-night Grand Tour of Italy covers the whole length of the country: Venice, Bologna, Montecatini Terme, Pisa, Florence, Orvieto, Rome, the abbey of Montecassino, Pompeii and the Sorrento Peninsula, then Calabria and Messina. It is the long way round to the strait, and a good one.

For a slower look at the heel rather than the toe, Explore's seven-night Cycle Puglia rides from Altamura and Matera to Putignano, Alberobello, Cisternino, Locorotondo, Conversano and Monopoli, then down to the coast at Savelletri, Egnazia and Torre Canne. It runs in April, May, September and October.

Calabria's summer is hot, and its beaches are full of Italians in August. Spring and autumn are better for touring: the mountains are green in April and May, the sea is warm through September, and the strait is at its clearest on a cool, bright morning. Take the ferry on deck, whatever the season. It is a short crossing, but it is one of the great ones: from one shore of the ancient world to another, between two monsters.