Up on the hill, reachable by a series of steps, is its beautiful historic center, of Paleolithic origin, where you can admire the remains of ancient walls and suggestive narrow and winding alleys.
Scalea is one of the oldest cities in Calabria, located between the hills and the valley of the Lao river south of Praia a Mare in the upper Tyrrhenian Sea of ​​Cosenza.
The historic center is dominated by the ruins of the Norman Castle of the eleventh century, which was built by the Normans on the site of a Lombard fortress. In 1250 Ruggiero di Loria was born here and became a great admiral of the Angevin and Aragonese fleet; his deeds and his strong personality also struck the imagination of Boccaccio who in the Decameron recalls his figure and his native town. For years, the castle was the home of many feudal lords, including Guglielmo d’Altavilla. At the end of the 18th century it was abandoned and soon fell into disrepair. Of the Castle, rebuilt in the Angevin and Aragonese epochs, the ruins of the turrets, the bulwarks and the central keep remain.