Marchesato
There is a place in Calabria where gentle, harmonious hills lean against the mountains on one side and dissolve into sea waves on the other. Hills painted in deep green during winter and spring rains, then turning golden yellow in the summer. Scattered across them, solitary trees stand like sentinels, surveying the landscape.
A land of great historical value since the times of Magna Graecia, the Marchesato—now corresponding to the province of Crotone—extends into parts of Catanzaro and Cosenza. Long known as grazing land, it hosts ancient settlements of significant historical importance, such as Santa Severina.
Nature, history, culture, and myth have shaped this territory, which still today is home to pastures and farms that produce goods of exceptional flavor. Here, shepherds still descend from the mountains with their flocks, just as they have for centuries.
The beauty of the landscape hides a unique native flora: ryegrass, clover, chicory, sulla, and alfalfa thrive here. The climate is also ideal for aging the cheese, contributing to its unmistakable character.
Transhumance
Like a tale painted in rich, rounded colors and steeped in myth, it happens that—even on the threshold of modernity—shepherds still live their solitary lives alongside their flocks, just as they did long ago.
Resembling ancient fauns, dressed in the wool of their animals and armed with their inseparable axes to face the harshness and countless dangers of the mountains, the shepherds of Cosenza would descend to the coastal plains of Crotone, as they had done since time immemorial, at the end of the summer season, bringing their flocks with them.
They would stay there for six continuous months, a tradition that forged deep bonds between the people of Crotone and the people of Cosenza.
Thus, transhumance not only ensured the survival of livestock and the rich production of milk, but also strengthened vital social and economic ties, which found their symbolic culmination in the ancient Mulerà fair.
It was at this very fair that the important buying and selling of wheels of “pecorino cheese” and fresh ricotta took place.
