Galliciano - Calabria Grecanico

Galliciano is located in the heart of the 9 Greek speaking villages of Calabria in the deep South, the extreme tip of the Italian boot, a place known as Aspromonte.The villages are the following:

Bova, Bova Marina, Condofuri, Chorio di Roccaforte, Chorio Roghudi, Roghudi, Amendolea, Roccaforte del Greco and finally Galliciano.
Another large Greek speaking village, Pentedattilo, which has the same name as the mountain range in Cyprus, has been abandoned.The total Grecanico population of all the villages is about 9,000. Of these, very few understand the Grecanico language and even fewer speak it. Of all the Greek speaking villages, Galliciano has preserved and retained many aspects of the Greek cultural heritage. It is the place where the language of Homer is still spoken, and where many cultural traditions trace themselves back to Greece. Perhaps the fact that it is the most isolated of all the villages which make up the Greek speaking zone of Calabria is an indication of that.

Sadly the Greek language spoken in this region for thousands of years is rapidly dying off. The village of Galliciano is the last stronghold of this ancient culture and it is called the Acropolis of Hellenism in Calabria. Recently a Greek Orthodox church was build in the village and it was also visited by the Orthodox ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in 2001.