The seaside village of Diamante is situated on Italy’s western coast in the province of Cosenza, part of the Calabria region of southern Italy. It looks out over the Tyrrhenian Sea with Sicily in the distance. (If you visualize Italy’s “toe of the boot,” Diamante is on the front of the foot above the ankle!)
Dating back to as early as the 1600s, Diamante is known for its fisheries and agriculture. The crops it’s famous for are the Diamante citron fruit and hot chili peppers, thus its nickname, La città dei murales e dei peperoncini, or The City of Murals and Hot Peppers!
After leading a photo tour in Tuscany in 2019, I traveled south to the Calabria region to scout for a future photo tour there. That photo tour has been rescheduled several times now, first due the pandemic and then due to the war in Ukraine. This October, at long last, I’m returning with a small group of seven photographers to explore the region. While there are many photogenic locations throughout Calabria, the village of Diamante and its famous murals earned a special place in my heart.
How did the mural project get its start?
It wasn’t all that long ago – just 1981! – when the Milanese painter Nani Razetti, proposed the mural concept (he called it Operation Murals) to Evasio Pascale, then the mayor of Diamante, who enthusiastically embraced the idea. That first year, more than 80 Italian and international painters created murals throughout the heart of Diamante. Many of these original works have been restored after years of weathering along the coast. The project has thrived for the past 42 years thanks to the efforts of a new generation of painters and today Diamante and surrounding districts are graced with more than 150 murals.
While I almost always use a Fuji mirrorless and an iPhone, each of the images here was made with the iPhone XS Max and processed with Lightroom Mobile and/or the mobile app SnapSeed.
The photos of murals scattered throughout this article are some of my favorites from my 2019 trip.
While I’m sure they all have stories, I’ll share the one about the mural of the tree (shown) that moved me and has stayed with me since it was first told to me by Diamante’s Mayor, Maria Rosa, in 2019. I was told it is a true story.
A young couple, both artists, who were very much in love, celebrated their honeymoon in Calabria in the mid 1980s. They enjoyed a stay in Diamante and were taken with the many murals throughout the village.
Over the years, they developed their respective careers as artists, both influenced by the murals they had seen in the village in their youth.
Later, after enjoying a long and happy marriage, the husband succumbed to illness and died. The wife, now an accomplished artist, returned to Diamante in 2012 and painted the ambiguous mural featuring the tree in memory of her late husband and in honor of their loving life together.
After this October’s photo tour in Calabria, I plan to stay for an additional week to scout new locations for another trip in 2024. If you’d like to join me, email me or subscribe to my newsletter to see when the trip opens for registration.
In the meantime, be safe, stay well, and keep on creating!
Rad A. Drew
August 2023
Website: https://www.raddrewphotography.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rad.drew/
LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/RadDrew
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMoJopH3SODokh-zvfHHiDw
Newsletter: https://bit.ly/2QMmCYa_RAD_News
Elevate Your Vision
Read this story and all the best stories on The Luminous Landscape
The author has made this story available to Luminous Landscape members only. Upgrade to get instant access to this story and other benefits available only to members.
Why choose us?
Luminous-Landscape is a membership site. Our website contains over 5300 articles on almost every topic, camera, lens and printer you can imagine. Our membership model is simple, just $2 a month ($24.00 USD a year). This $24 gains you access to a wealth of information including all our past and future video tutorials on such topics as Lightroom, Capture One, Printing, file management and dozens of interviews and travel videos.
- New Articles every few days
- All original content found nowhere else on the web
- No Pop Up Google Sense ads – Our advertisers are photo related
- Download/stream video to any device
- NEW videos monthly
- Top well-known photographer contributors
- Posts from industry leaders
- Speciality Photography Workshops
- Mobile device scalable
- Exclusive video interviews
- Special vendor offers for members
- Hands On Product reviews
- FREE – User Forum. One of the most read user forums on the internet
- Access to our community Buy and Sell pages; for members only.
You may also like
