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Dip your toes into the foot of Italy: With new direct flights and Mafia members being locked up, could Calabria become the new Tuscany? Mark Jones says Calabria is just as good as the popular Amalfi coast - but much cheaper Easyjet and Ryanair have launched direct flights to Lamezia Terme from London airports READ MORE: How you can get paid £25k to move to this beautiful region By Mark Jones For The Mail On Sunday Published: 10:17 EDT, 12 July 2024 | Updated: 10:17 EDT, 12 July 2024 e-mail View comments Advertisement In the early 19th Century, the Scottish traveller Patrick Brydone was weighing up how to get to Sicily from the Italian mainland. He could sail down the coast to Messina – or travel on land through Calabria. He chose the boat – and wrote to a friend: ‘The danger from the banditti is so great, the accommodation so wretched and inconvenience of every kind so numerous.

.. that we soon relinquished that scheme.



’ And that, pretty much, is how tourists have seen the land at the ‘toe’ of Italy ’s ‘foot’ ever since: poor, Mafia-infested, with nowhere decent to stay. But all that is changing. Ryanair has launched a weekly flight from Stansted to Lamezia Terme, a city in the heart of Calabria, and easyJet is starting one from Gatwick .

There are new and updated coastal resorts, ‘agriturismo’ farm-stays and rural B&Bs starting up in the mountains. On a trip to Calabria, Italy, Mark Jones visits the award-winning town of Tropea (pictured) Above is Trope.

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