RESIDENCE SAN FRANCISCO

According to the legend, the foundation of the town was wanted by one of Priamo's sisters, Astiochena, who wanted an inhabited center at Capo Rizzuto promontory, near the temple of Hera. Some of them derive the name "Insula" from the existence of some prospective islands the three "Japigi" headlands, identified in Capo Rizzuto, Capo Cimiti and Punta Le Castella, so named by the legendary Japyx, son of Dedalo, one of the most valued artists of ancient Greece. According to some ancient literary testimonies (Herodotus, Strabo) Japyx or Japige fled from Crete following his father in an expedition to Sicily; but on the return, a violent storm made him wreck at the coast of today 's Calabria, and was named the "Japigia land". On the head of Capo Piccolo, between Capo Rizzuto and Le Castella, in 1977, archaeologist Domenico Marino discovered, and later excavated, an ancient Bronze Age 2 and Middle Bronze Age 1-2 that restored some fragments of Mycenaean Mycenaean ceramics, one of the oldest discovered in the Italian peninsula, a sure witness of contacts between peoples indigenous enotrio-japigi and the myno-mycenaean world. The finds are exhibited and preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Crotone. Other scholars still derive the name of Isola because "Insula" was the place where those who lived enjoyed the right to asylum. The emperor of Constantinople, Leo VI (886-911), raised the island of Capo Rizzuto to a bishopric. The diocese and therefore the town is indicated in the Byzantine documents with the Greek word "Άσυλον" meaning "sacred place" where man can not be persecuted. With the transformation of Greek writing into Latin, the name became Island.