From afar a white crown on lumpy foothills, close up a survival of feudal Calabria with a few 17thC mansions in poor repair. Here old travellers met the ‘biggest brigand in the South’ – the local innkeeper. Acri was Acherontia, its torrent the Acheron. Alexander of Epirus died here, as foretold by soothsayers. Having crossed the more famous Greek river of that name, he thought he had successfully called destiny’s bluff.