Rossano

Rossano rises above the Ionian coast of Calabria, a town whose churches preserve a strong Byzantine inheritance. The small church of San Marco and the monastery of Santa Maria del Patir recall a Greek-speaking religious world in which monks copied and kept manuscripts. Among the treasures preserved in Rossano is an illuminated Greek Gospel book written on purple parchment, the Codex Purpureus Rossanensis. Its pictures of the life of Christ are among the oldest surviving in a Greek manuscript.