Catanzaro: 60 hectares of park and one huge arch

Catanzaro gives you three things in one afternoon: 60 hectares of park with open air sculpture, a 1962 concrete arch spanning 231³ meters over a valley, and a silk history that once ran to thousands of looms.

Sixty hectares built on a disused site

The Parco della Biodiversita Mediterranea Michele Traversa covers 60 hectares on Via Cortese Vinicio, reclaimed from an abandoned area. Inside it are marked nature trails, the MUSMI military history museum, a wildlife rescue center and a Carabinieri environmental unit.

The comune presents the sculpture collection as the first international sculpture park in southern Italy, naming Antony Gormley and Michelangelo Pistoletto among the artists. That formula belongs to the comune, and this page attributes it rather than repeating it as an established record.

The park is open every day of the year, from 6:30 am to 11:00 pm in winter and from 6:00 am to midnight in summer, according to the Province of Catanzaro, which runs it. The playgrounds and the park's little train cost nothing, the MUSMI charges admission, and dogs stay on a leash on the internal roads, off the lawns. The Province does not publish the dates on which one timetable gives way to the other, and an older notice on its own site still shows an outdated summer schedule.

The Bisantis viaduct: 231 meters of arch

The Bisantis viaduct carries a road deck of 468.45³ meters, 110³ meters above the bed of the Fiumarella, on a reinforced concrete arch spanning 231³ meters. Riccardo Morandi designed it, construction ran from 1958 to 1962, and it was dedicated in 2001 to senator Fausto Bisantis.

It has a single carriageway with three lanes and a pedestrian walkway, which is the detail that matters for a visit: you can cross it on foot and look down.

Two figures circulate for the height, 110³ meters and 112³ meters, and two dates for the dedication. This page uses the ones from the source actually read, and does not repeat the claim that it is the tallest concrete arch bridge in the world, which we could not verify.

Silk, and the looms that paid for the town

Catanzaro was the silk city of the Kingdom of Naples for centuries. The statutes of the silk guild were set in 1519⁴ by a diploma of Charles V, after the tax privileges granted in 1397⁴ by king Ladislaus of Durazzo, and the first mention of Catanzaro cloth goes back to 1205⁴.

According to the comune, the looms went from around 500⁴ in the sixteenth century to between 5,000⁴ and 6,000⁴ in the seventeenth, then down to about 800⁴ in the eighteenth. Those seventeenth century figures are handed down rather than proved from archives, and they are quoted here as the comune states them.

The surviving piece you can visit is Palazzo Marincola on via Alessandro Turco, a mid nineteenth century silk works, now the MARCA art museum. Its hours and ticket are not verified here.

A capital that is not the largest city

Catanzaro had 82,708⁵ residents on January 1, 2026 on the ISTAT estimate, 39,494⁵ men and 43,214⁵ women. It is the capital of Calabria and the second comune in the region by population, behind Reggio di Calabria with 167,925⁵.

That split explains a lot about the place. Regional offices, the university campus at Germaneto and the administrative traffic are here; the region's biggest population is down at the Strait, in another city.

More in Catanzaro, getting there and Calabria.

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