Riding Calabria: The Roads That Rewrote Our Map

Calabria is the only region in Italy with three national parks. It is also the only region where most riders going south pass through without stopping. That gap — between what the region holds and what people think it holds — is where the best riding in southern Europe lives.

The numbers are unusual: 192,565 hectares of protected wilderness in the Pollino alone, another 73,000 in the Sila, 64,000 in the Aspromonte. One UNESCO Global Geopark, two UNESCO World Heritage forests. A canyon deeper than most Alpine gorges. Sixteen state nature reserves. And roads — small, occasionally unmarked, frequently empty — connecting all of it.

This is not a ranking of best roads. It is a working guide to a region that does not present itself well on maps, and rides significantly better than it looks on paper.

Mountain road entering Pollino National Park at dawn — The SS92 between Viggianello and Rotonda — the spine of the Pollino section. Empty at midweek, with the Pino Loricato symbol marking the park boundary.

The roads worth knowing

SS92 — Viggianello to Rotonda (Pollino)

The quietest good road in southern Italy. No dramatic hairpins, no viewpoint signs — just a clean mountain valley with the Pollino massif above and the Mercure river below. This is where the riding feels earned rather than performed.

SP263 — the descent to Civita

A series of switchbacks cut into limestone above the Raganello gorge. The village of Civita sits on a promontory with a 700-metre canyon below it. The road is narrow, the guardrails occasional, and the view changes with every corner. Allow 40 minutes for the ride and two hours for the stop.

SS107 — the Sila traverse (Cosenza to Camigliatello Silano)

The Sila is a plateau, not a range — which means the roads don't climb to a pass and descend; they climb and stay up, moving through pine forest at 1,200 metres for long stretches. The air quality here has been certified by a team of biologists as the best in Europe. That is a claim, not marketing.

SP1 Aspromonte — the Gambarie ridge road

The Aspromonte is the final mountain before the sea. The ridge roads above Gambarie offer views of both coasts simultaneously — Ionian to the east, Tyrrhenian to the west. There are no signs telling you where to stop. You work that out yourself.

Three national parks in one route

Calabria is the only region in Italy — the only region — with three national parks. The Pollino in the north (the largest in Italy by area), the Sila in the centre (a highland plateau of ancient pines and glacial lakes), and the Aspromonte in the far south (a massif where the road ends at the Strait of Messina). They are connected by a single route: the Parks of the South tour covers all three over four days, ending at Villa San Giovanni.

The Ciclovia dei Parchi della Calabria — a 545-km cycling route through all three parks — won the Oscar for Cycle Tourism in 2021. The motorcycle route follows the same corridor, on roads the cyclists don't use. The logic is the same: north to south, mountain to coast, park to park.

"People ask if Calabria is safe. Safe from what — emptiness? The roads have no traffic. The villages have no tourists. That is not a warning. That is the point."

— Davide De Caro, SudRiders

The canyon most riders don't know exists

The Canyon del Raganello is a 1,600-hectare nature reserve south of Civita, in the Pollino. The canyon walls reach 700 metres. The Raganello river has carved the gorge over millions of years through karst limestone; the result is a series of pools, narrows and vertical walls that rival anything in the Dolomites for scale — and receive perhaps one percent of the visitor numbers.

Expedia UK describes it as "commune with nature and explore the great outdoors." That is the kind of understatement that comes from not having been there. The canyon is accessible on foot from Civita in 40 minutes, via a trail that descends through Mediterranean scrub to the river. The Ponte del Diavolo — a medieval stone bridge spanning the Raganello where the canyon narrows to six metres — is the end point. It has appeared in exactly zero travel guides aimed at international riders.

Mountain road approaching the Aspromonte massif from the north — South of the Sila, the Aspromonte begins — the road drops toward Reggio Calabria and the Strait of Messina visible on clear days from the ridge.

The village that films at Venice — and the cave that's older than farming

In 2021, a film called Il Buco — about the exploration of the Abisso del Bifurto, a 683-metre cave system near Cerchiara di Calabria in the Pollino — premiered at the Venice Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize. It was shot entirely in the park. The cave is the 40th deepest in the world. Neither fact appears anywhere in standard tourism material for the region.

Nearby, the Grotta del Romito near Papasidero contains Palaeolithic engravings of a bull — one of the most complete examples of prehistoric art in Europe, dated to around 12,000 BCE. The cave is small and visited by almost nobody. You can ride to within 300 metres of it.

These are not the kind of places that appear on motorcycle route aggregators. They require knowing where to look, or riding with someone who does.

When to go

The riding window is long: April through October works, with May–June and September–October being the best combination of temperature, road condition and light. August brings hikers and beach traffic on the coastal sections but leaves the mountain roads alone. The parks are free to enter — no tickets, no barriers, no reservations required for riding through.

Fly into Lamezia Terme for the centre of the route, or Naples/Salerno to start from the north. The Parks of the South tour begins at Salerno and ends at Villa San Giovanni — 860 km, four days, three parks. The self-drive version includes a GPX file and road book. The guided version adds a local guide, accommodation and evening meals at restaurants we've selected from the territory research.

Download — Parks of the South, Day 1 GPX

Salerno → Campotenese · 246 km · GPX + road book PDF

Free download

The full three-park route — Pollino, Sila, Aspromonte — is documented in the Parks of the South tour page. The Pollino section in detail is in a separate journal entry. The Civita and Raganello stop has its own piece. The rest of the roads, the food stops and the overnight recommendations are in the tour road book, available when you book or download the GPX.