Cipolla Rossa di Tropea: a town name, three provinces

The Cipolla Rossa di Tropea Calabria is an IGP registered on March 27, 2008, and it covers three types of red onion grown across three provinces of Calabria, not only around the town of Tropea.

Registered in 2008, by name and by class

Commission regulation 284²/2008 of March 27, 2008 registered the name, and it appeared in the EU Official Journal L 86 on March 28, 2008. The class is 1.6: fruit, vegetables and cereals, fresh or processed.

The act itself was read on EUR-Lex, the EU's legal database, so the name, the type and the dates rest on the regulation and not on a summary of it.

The agriculture ministry's register names the onion as Calabria's flagship product, with its EU registration dated March 28, 2008.

One name, three onions

The IGP covers 3 types: the cipollotto, a spring onion; the onion for eating fresh; and the cipolla da serbo, the storage onion.

That matters more at a market stall than on a label. The three are separate types in the registration, and one name covers all of them, so if a recipe calls for one, ask for it by type.

The zone: Cosenza, Catanzaro, Vibo Valentia

The protected zone runs through comuni in 3 provinces: Cosenza, Catanzaro and Vibo Valentia. The full list of towns sits in the product specification, which wasn't opened for this page, so read the three provinces as an outline and not as a finished map.

Tropea itself is in Vibo Valentia. A town of 5,668³ residents (ISTAT, January 1, 2026) gives its name to an onion grown far outside its own boundary, and the word Calabria at the end of the registered name is the more accurate half of it.

Tropea, on its cliff

Tropea's old town stands on a cliff of about 60 meters, dropping straight to the Tyrrhenian on the Costa degli Dei. The comune gives that height, and it's the town's own figure rather than a surveyed one.

Two population figures circulate. The comune's own count was 5,822³ at December 31, 2024; ISTAT's estimate is 5,668³ at January 1, 2026. The ISTAT figure is the more recent, and it's the one used here.

If the onion is part of why you're coming, the town is a good place to eat it and a poor guide to where it grew. The label, with the IGP mention, tells you more than the name of the place selling it.

For the town, see Tropea and how Tropea lives in seven months. For the region's other protected names, see food in Calabria.

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