HOTEL TITO SERRANO

The town of Melito Porto Salvo is one of the seaside resorts marked with two sails in the Blue Guide of Legambiente and is part of the Mountain Community of Southern Ionian Head South. To reach the town one must venture into a very long street, called Via Lembo nicknamed "Lembo d'Italia" because it is the symbol of the extreme part of the boot); walking along it you come across the fountain with "good water", which once came directly from the mountains; proceeding we enter the town that is divided into Melito Alta and Melito Bassa: in the upper part of the houses are perched on very steep paved hillocks, while towards the valley there are artisan shops and shops. on the Ionian sea and with Sicily as a backdrop, and in particular Etna, which offers fantastic scenery in clear evenings. To visit the Garibaldi Museum on the Melito Porto Salvo seafront in the exact spot where Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Thousand (the Red Shirts) they landed in the distant 1860s and 1862s. The museum consists of three parts: the external area (here is the new Garibaldian stele which replaced the old original, now dismantled); an underground area containing the tombs of some of Garibaldi's allies; and the actual museum where you can see the weapons and clothing of the hero of the two worlds, numerous documents and sources related to the landing of the Mille. Always on the Lungomare dei Mille to visit the sanctuary dedicated to the Madonna of Porto Salvo that it was built in 1680 at the behest of the Marquis Domenico Alberti of Pentedattilo, on the remains of an older building that arose, not surprisingly, in a place called "Portus Veneris" in the fourteenth century. On the altar of the church, the canvas of the Madonna of Porto Salvo dominates, depicted protecting a sailing ship at the mercy of the waves. Painted in the early eighteenth century by Antonio Cilea, it returns annually in procession to Pentedattilo, strengthening the bond of this community with the hand-shaped cliff. The procession, which takes place on the last Saturday of April, is certainly the religious moment most felt by the 12,000 thousand residents of Melito di Porto Salvo, the demographically most consistent center of the Grecanica Area, the result of depopulation of the Greek slopes, following the flood of 1952.