Cattolica di Stilo: a 10th-century church, five domes

The Cattolica di Stilo, a 10th-century Byzantine church about seven meters a side with five domes, reopened on July 29, 2026 and is closed on Mondays.

Reopened July 29, 2026

The church reopened to the public on July 29, 2026, after works to improve accessibility. It is closed on Mondays.

On Tuesdays and Sundays it opens only in the afternoon, from 2 to 7:30 pm. Wednesday to Saturday it opens from 8:30 am to 7:30 pm, and so does the first Sunday of the month and August 15. The ticket office closes 15 minutes before the doors.

The reopening notice also listed Sunday morning hours for some weekends in August 2026. Those are over: a Sunday morning arrival finds it shut, except on the first Sunday of the month.

No price anyone has confirmed

No ticket price is published for the Cattolica in any source we could verify.

Two documents from the same town office disagree. The monument page says entry is free. The reopening notice of July 29 talks about a ticket office that closes a quarter of an hour early, which is not something a free site needs.

So neither "free" nor a figure appears here. Call the number the town gives, 0964¹ 776006¹, before you set off.

Nine bays, four columns, five domes

The plan is nearly square, about seven meters a side, divided into nine equal bays and three apses, with five cylindrical domes carried on four columns: two in cipollino marble, one in Luni marble and one in granite.

The frescoes include Saint Basil, Saint John Chrysostom and John the Baptist, and a Dormition of the Virgin painted in the 14th or 15th century, several hundred years after the walls.

It is a small building. The visit is measured in minutes, and the reason to come is how much architecture fits into so little floor.

Not a UNESCO site, whatever you've read

Calabria has one UNESCO World Heritage site, and it is not the Cattolica: it is the serial property of ancient beech forests that Calabria shares with Abruzzo, Basilicata, Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, Puglia and Toscana.

The UNESCO label Calabria does hold for a work of Greek Christian art is on a different list. The Codex Purpureus Rossanensis, a Greek Gospel book of the 5th to 6th century written in silver and gold on purple parchment, with 14 miniatures, has been in the Memory of the World register since 2015 and is kept by the Archdiocese of Rossano-Cariati.

Hours and tickets for the codex at Corigliano-Rossano are not verified. The rest of the region is at Calabria, and the list that confuses everyone at UNESCO sites by region.

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