Things to See in Pizzo | 2 Monuments & Landmarks

All the monuments in Pizzo

The landmarks and masterpieces worth planning a day around.

The round bastion of Murat's castle above Pizzo, scene of his last hour

Castello MuratMurat CastleJoachim Murat's 1815 execution, Aragonese keep, preserved cell and sentencing room, steps from Pizzo's tartufo piazzaNapoleon's flamboyant brother-in-law Joachim Murat, king of Naples, met his end in this small Aragonese castle in October 1815, court-martialed and shot by firing squad after landing nearby in a doomed bid to reclaim his throne. He is said to have directed the execution himself, refusing a blindfold. His cell and the room where the sentence was handed down are preserved as a small museum, all of it a short, strange walk from the piazza where Pizzo's tartufo gelato was supposedly invented, one of Calabria's odder juxtapositions of tragedy and treat.Plan the visit

Chiesetta di PiedigrottaPiedigrotta ChurchChurch carved into sea tuff, 17th-century shipwreck vow origin, generations of carved saints, cave nave beside the beachSailors caught in a storm off Pizzo are said to have vowed to carve a chapel into the shoreline's soft tuff if they survived, and their gratitude in the 17th century began a tradition that local families kept adding to for two centuries afterward. The result is a cave church that grows more crowded the deeper you go, dozens of stone saints and biblical figures emerging directly from the rock walls, some crude and folk-carved, others startlingly refined, all lit by natural openings toward the beach just outside. Restoration work over the decades has stabilized the soft stone, but the church still feels handmade rather than built.

The Pizzo guide

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