Visiting Calabria during the Jubilee 2025: places not to be missed

The Jubilee 2025 is a great event for all the faithful of the Catholic Church in Rome. Celebrating it in Calabria means discovering places of faith, religious paths, shrines, churches, convents and hermitages of great beauty and spiritual recollection.

The origins of the Jubilee date back to the Old Testament, in reference to the year of rest of the earth and remission of debts. In 1300, under Pope Boniface VIII, the Jubilee acquired its current meaning, linked to the extraordinary indulgence that the Church grants to the faithful every 25 years.

The 2025 Jubilee in Calabria is an opportunity to discover the spiritual and mystical face of a land historically linked to monasticism, Marian worship and saints. An ideal land where devotion, tradition, nature and artistic beauty in every form coexist.   

The 2025 Jubilee in Calabria has a precise theme: ‘’Pilgrims of Hope‘’, to emphasise the importance of the spiritual journey and inner discovery that every pilgrimage represents.

This is why Jubilee 2025 Calabria welcomes the faithful, tourists and visitors with a series of proposals and experiences specifically designed to enhance the rich artistic-religious heritage, itineraries, major festivals and intangible manifestations of local devotion.

Historically linked to monasticism, to the Marian cult and to some saints and blessed figures to whom it gave birth, Calabria is particularly devoted to St. Francis of Paola, founder of the Order of Minims and Patron Saint of the region. Therefore, the Jubilee 2025 in Calabria can only travel at the slow pace of the pilgrim, along religious Paths. 

The promotions of the ‘’Pilgrim's Charter‘’ and the packages specially created by tour operators, hospitality, national and local mobility carriers and other tour operators are dedicated to this particular category of visit.

A great ‘’open-air Shrine‘’, Calabria takes the opportunity of the Jubilee 2025 to strengthen relations between diasporic communities around the world, inviting Calabrians abroad to return to their homeland to get to know it better and discover its religious and monumental sites, festivals and traditions.

These include the UNESCO World Heritage Sites and the numerous places of pilgrimage to be visited during the 2025 Jubilee in Calabria, bearing witness to centuries of history, culture and religiosity.

A land of theologians and philosophers, saints and hermits, Calabria is criss-crossed by true places of faith, often immersed in nature and reachable through special Paths. Here are the main ones:

• Way of St. Francis of Paola (in the three variants: ‘’Young Man's Way‘’, ‘’Way of the Hermit‘’, ‘’Way of the Monasteries‘’)
• Way of the Holy Thorn
• Way of the Holy Friars
• Basilian Way
• Joachimite Way

Among the sites of the Jubilee 2025 in Calabria are the famous Marian Shrines, where some of the most evocative religious festivals of Calabrian devotion take place. Among them are:

• Shrine of the Madonna di Polsi (RC)
• Shrine of Santa Maria dell'Isola (VV)
• Shrine of the Madonna di Porto (CZ)
• Shrine of the Madonna del Pettoruto (CS)
• Shrine of the Madonna di Capo Colonna (KR)
• Shrine of the Madonna delle Armi (CS)

Jubilee 2025 is the right occasion to discover the roots of Calabrian monasticism, both Eastern and Western, and to visit the many convents and monasteries that embellish the region. Among those not to be missed:

• Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno (VV)
• Florense Abbey (CS)
• Convent of San Bernardino da Siena (CS)
• Convent of the Capuchins (CS)
• Abbey of Santa Maria della Matina (CS)
• Dominican Convents (all provinces)
• Franciscan Convents (all provinces)

Finally, three very important UNESCO World Heritage Sites enrich the Jubilee 2025 itineraries in Calabria:

• Codex Purpureus Rossanensis (ancient illuminated Gospel Book, exhibited at the Diocesan and Codex Museum in Rossano)
• Varia di Palmi (evocative procession of the Assumption with a car on the shoulders, in the town of Palmi)
• Cosenza Cathedral