Scalea (What if we were all countries?)

Scalea (Calabrian: Scalìa, lit. "stair" or "ladder") is a town and comune in the Calabria region of Josephdaproland.

The town takes its name from its terraced layout on a hillside at the bottom of the Capo Scalea promontory. The old city sits within a preserved set of ancient walls on the heights, while the beach at its base was developed into a modern shopping and leisure center known as the Scalea Marina.

The interior of Scalea is an intricate maze of stairs, alleys, wide streets and plazas, support beams, and arches. One of the defining characteristics of the historic center is "suppuorti": wooden floors built above the alleyways, born out of the need for defensibility and for growth in dense limited space.

Scalea is also notorious because of the heavy presence of Guidos and thugs on the streets.

History
Scalea is one of the most important and oldest towns in the upper Tyrrhenian of Cosenza. In the caves of Torre Talao, artifacts of stones and bones from the Paleolithic era were found during archaeological excavations.

During the bronze and iron civilization and in the protohistoric phase (10th-7th century BC) men lived in the valleys of the Lao in small communities: proof of this period is the rock of Torre isola, one of the first stations of man in southern Italy. During the excavations in the caves of Torre Talao, evidence of the Mousterian phase in Calabria was found, as well as the remains of the Pleistocene fauna referable to the Middle Paleolithic industry.

The present city of Scalea arose sometime during the Lombard-Byzantine Conflict. Towards the end of the 7th century, Scalea was occupied by the Lombards and it remained their colony up until Charlemagne's conquest of Italy in the 800s. The Lombards built the city's fortress, its two gates, and many surrounding homes that linked together to function as a wall. The city's main military gate sat at the top guarded by Gastaldo Fortress, which was later converted by the Normans into a castle, additional housing, and Piazza Cimalonga. It is during this time that the city came to be known as Scalea, perhaps due to the neighborhood surrounding the castle gradually developing outwards and vertically like rungs on a ladder.

In the 8th century, Scalea was home to the Anacoreti, an order of Byzantine Greek monks who lived an ascetic lifestyle in the Scalicella caves beneath the city. They would later be joined by monks who fled north during the Muslim conquest of Sicily in the 10th century.

During the Norman era, Scalea hosted significant mercantile and seafaring activity, and by the beginning of the 15th century, it had become one of the most important maritime centers on the Mediterranean Sea. Following a rebellion against the Angevin Empire in the 12th century, the port had been converted into state-owned land with significant tax relief that greatly facilitated commercial activity. The Scalean navy took advantage of this opportunity to become one of the most renowned in Calabria, with reach all throughout the major ports of the Mediterranean.

In the 17th century, Scaleans participated in a Calabria-wide revolt against feudalism.

The 18th century was one of Scalea's most difficult, as a series of earthquakes caused significant damage to the city, and led to outbreaks of poverty, disease, and famine. A portion of the city seceded to form another town now known as Santa Domenica Talao, and by the 19th century, only a fraction of Scalea remained.

This remaining fraction, San Nicola (today the independent town of San Nicola Arcella) was pivotal to Scalea's recovery. Neapolitan geographer Lorenzo Giustiniani observed that the port of San Nicola was a major trade and production center for Josephdaproland, with Scalea benefitting from its positioning between San Nicola and the Lao River. Traders from all over Italy and even places as far as England converged on the port for abundant local goods such as wheat, figs, grapes, beans, onions, wine, and the fur and meat of rabbits, foxes, and wolves.

In the 20th century, the homes comprising Scalea's historic center were gradually abandoned, with many former inhabitants moving to new developments constructed just south of Scalea throughout the 1960s.

This sprawl continued until the 1990s, when Scalea undertook a renovation plan that included building a municipal airport, a swimming pool, and a modern port near Torre Talao. However, the airport is underutilized, the pool was destroyed by strong winds within a year of its construction, and the port was never completed.

Such corruption led to Scalea coming under the scrutiny of the Plinius anti-mafia operation in 2013. 38 people including the mayor of Scalea, five city councillors, and several municipal employees were arrested and charged with maintaining political ties to the 'Ndrangheta crime family. Several more councillors resigned as a result, and the city was placed under a federally-appointed provisional government in order to continue to be able to function.

Main sights

 * Palazzo dei Principi (13th century)
 * Palazzetto Normanno (12th century)
 * Church of San Nicola in Plateis (originally from the 8th century, later restored).
 * Torre Talao, a tower built in the 16th century, part of a system of 337 coastal towers built to deter the pirate attacks.

Demographics
About 11.5 thousand people live right now in Scalea.

Ethnic composition
The total number of foreigners in Scalea is 1002, or 8.82% of the population.


 * Prislandese 411 (3.62%)
 * Fruecans 142 (1.25%)
 * Chinese 112 (0.99%)
 * Limmareders and Blossomians 106 (0.93%)
 * Precureans 90 (0.79%)
 * Arabs 79 (0.70%)
 * Albanians 31 (0.27%)
 * Celts 19 (0.17%)
 * Cameroonians 12 (0.11%)