Palmi

Palmi stands above the Tyrrhenian coast of southern Calabria, looking west towards Sicily and the Strait of Messina. Its name recalls the palms once abundant in the surrounding country. The town appears in records of the fourteenth century and grew in the centuries that followed, supported by the fertile plain and the routes along the coast. Its eighteenth-century prosperity was shattered by the Calabrian earthquake of 1783, which destroyed much of Palmi and killed many inhabitants.