Castle of Amantea

Not everyone knows that Amantea, on the beautiful Tyrrhenian coast of Cosenza, was conquered by the Arabs in 846. The current ruins of Amantea Castle are the most striking evidence of this page of Arab history in Calabria. The name of the town itself derives from that conquest: Al-Mantiah (“The Fortress”), an impregnable emirate, fortified on top of the panoramic hill by Amantea Castle and a series of residential, service and religious buildings.

Visitors to Amantea today can identify the remains of its ancient castle and fortified citadel with those of the Torre del Mastio and, above all, with the building that scholars tend to identify as the ancient mosque at the time of the emir: the current Church of San Francesco. Among the archaeological finds relating to the emirate is a fragment of a funerary stele with two Koranic inscriptions in Arabic, found in what is now the Clarisse Palace (a former convent, inside which the fragment had been reused in the masonry), now on display at the National Archaeological Museum of Reggio Calabria.