Museo e Parco Archeologico Nazionale di Locri

A few kilometres inland from Locri's seafront, the plain of Marasà holds the ground plan of a Greek polis: circuit walls with towers and gates, sanctuaries, housing quarters and a theatre, served by a state museum that gathers the votive terracottas, bronzes and Roman sculpture of Lokroi Epizephyroi.

Why it matters

Lokroi Epizephyroi was one of the great colonies of Magna Graecia, founded by settlers from mainland Locris around the middle of the seventh century BC, with a traditional foundation date of 673 BC. Ancient sources credit it with Zaleucus, whose written law code is described by the Enciclopedia Italiana as the oldest in Europe, and with the victory of the battle of the Sagra against Croton. The cult of Persephone shaped the city's religious identity: her sanctuary stood outside the walls, near the Mannella hill, and the clay votive tablets known as pinakes that came from its favissa are among the most recognisable products of Greek craft in the West. Excavations directed by Paolo Orsi from 1908 onwards brought the city back to light, and today the site is the centrepiece of archaeological Calabria.

What to notice

Four itineraries cross the archaeological park, linking its walls, sanctuaries, residential quarters and theatre. The first runs through the eastern and northern sectors: stretches of city wall with two defensive towers, a city gate, the sanctuary of the Tesmophorion and the sacred area of Marasà, where the remains of the Ionic temple that anchors the site's reconstructions still hold the central position. The second crosses the southern sector: the sanctuary of Zeus the lightning-wielder, the Porta Portuense whose massive wall connects with the port, the Casa dei Leoni with a shrine of Aphrodite and its sima of lion-head antefixes, and the Centocamere quarter, a district of houses and workshops arranged around the U-shaped stoa. The third itinerary links Centocamere to Petrara, across probable forum remains and a bath building of the Roman city. The fourth follows the Dromo, a western stretch of wall, towards Pirettina and the Greek-Roman theatre. The museum's gallery includes a bronze mirror with a kouros-shaped handle of the late sixth century BC from the Lucifero necropolis, two painted pinakes of the mid-fifth century BC showing a rape scene and a procession, the bronze serpent from the sanctuary of Demetra Thesmophoros, and the marble togato portrait statue recovered near the forum. Upstairs in the Casino Macrì complex, the Roman section adds a rare basin cut in breccia marbles and a golden brattea with the Adoration of the Magi from a seventh-century reliquary.

Context and history

The colony's fortunes rose with the sixth and fifth centuries BC, favoured by ties with Sparta and Taranto, and its poetic voice, Nosside, is honoured today by a monument on the modern seafront. After the ancient city declined, survivors moved inland to Gerace, and the plain reverted to fields and ruins. Systematic excavation began with Orsi in 1908, the year his campaigns also cleared the great deposit of Persephone votives between the Mannella and Abbadessa hills. The first museum, an antiquarium, opened in 1971; the institute was designated a national museum in 1998, and the archaeology network has since grown into a single state institute uniting the museum at the site, the Roman-era Casino Macrì complex and the town-centre Territorio Museum at Palazzo Nieddu del Rio, opened in 2018.