On Route 106, 21 km south of Reggio. Not flowers but rainbow effects of sun and sky give the Violet Coast its name. Tricks of light provide the fata morgana, a legendary optical illusion over the Messina Strait. A shimmering city – presumably Messina – hangs upside down above the water. More people claim to have seen it than have actually done so and no photograph has been produced. Your best chance, they say, is at dawn, from Reggio’s promenade, after a night of thunderstorms.

On the 64-km stretch of rockbound coast do not miss Palmi, where the palm-trees which gave the place its name grow to extraordinary heights, tossing their plumes and straining against stout hawsers in the breeze. The upper town is a shrine to the memory of Francesco Cilea, locally-revered composer of Adriana Lecouvreur (1902) and some less-well-known operas. The museum devoted to this shy musician is charming; the sculpted wall-monument which protects his tomb illustrates the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. See www.comune.palmi.re.it

Palmi stands at the end of a pretty road, lined with orange groves, which climbs to Aspromonte and the mountain villages.

Bagnara is the next town south. Instead of automobiles it has boats, all parked anyhow on streets which, with their low-built cottages and cobbles, would not seem out of place in Devon. Look seaward between mid-April and June and you will see the pescespada (sword-fish) fleet of small boats with disproportionately high masts and long bowsprits drifting aimlessly until the shriek of a lookout brings them to full alert. Swordfish, delicate as salmon, are on Bagnara restaurant menus all summer in steaks or en croûte.

Scilla, next town south, is the Scylla of Homer’s Odyssey. An Aragonese castle, now a youth hostel, sits like a crown on the mythical rock above orange gardens. Local people identify offshore patches of disturbed water with Charybdis the whirlpool, but the navigational chart says nothing about it. Beneath the castle a row of antique cottages, some tastefully modernized, called La Chianalea, is strung along the shore.

Winter sun: the Costa Viola and Italy’s southernmost Mediterranean coastline have some winter sunshine, as does the Adriatic coast on the east side of the country.