You don’t really come to Calabria for forests. You come for the sea — the long ribbon of Tyrrhenian coast where the water turns that impossible turquoise around Tropea, or the wilder Ionian side with its empty beaches and Greek ghosts. You come for ‘nduja, for the bergamot, for villages stacked on hilltops like someone forgot to finish unpacking. Trees? Trees are what you fly over.
That is, until you drive up into the Sila.
About an hour inland from Cosenza, the road climbs through chestnut woods and switchbacks until your ears pop and the temperature drops ten degrees. You start seeing cows in the road. Actual cows, with bells. The Sila plateau sits at around 1,400 meters, and Calabrians call it their “green lung” — a high, cool, slightly improbable place that feels less like southern Italy and more like a forgotten corner of the Alps. There are lakes. There are wolves. In winter, there is enough snow to ski on, which is the kind of fact that breaks tourists’ brains when you tell them.
And tucked inside all of this, just outside a place called Croce di Magara, is a small fenced patch of forest that I genuinely think about more than I should.
Walking into the colonnade of the Giants of Sila
The site is called the Riserva Naturale dei Giganti di Fallistro — the Giants of Fallistro — though most people just call them I Giganti della Sila. The Giants of Sila. And the name is not marketing.
You walk in along a wooden boardwalk path, and within about thirty seconds the rest of the world quiets down. The trees here are Calabrian larch pines (Pinus laricio, sometimes called Pino Laricio or Calabrian black pine), and the ones that survive in this little reserve are around 350 years old. They reach up to 45 meters — call it a fifteen-story building — with trunks you couldn’t get your arms around if you tried. There are 58 of them still standing, plus four lying where they fell, which the FAI has thoughtfully left in place because a fallen giant is its own kind of teacher.
What hits you first is the geometry of it. These pines grow ramrod straight. No twisting, no leaning, no drama — just vertical columns of reddish bark rising up toward a canopy so high you have to tilt your head until your neck complains. People compare them to sequoias, and that comparison is a stretch in terms of raw size, but it is exactly right in terms of feeling. You are in a cathedral. The light comes down filtered and green. Sound goes weird — softer, somehow further away. You catch yourself whispering and you don’t know why.
There are little signs at the base of each notable tree telling you its height and diameter, which is the kind of nerdy detail I love. You start playing favorites. There’s always one tree that grabs you.
A short, strange history of the Fallistro reserve
The fact that these trees exist at all is something of an accident.
The Sila plateau used to be covered in this kind of forest. For centuries, Calabrian pines were prized — going back to the Bruzi people who tapped them for resin (the famous “pece bruzia,” used medicinally and to waterproof ships in antiquity) and continuing right through every wave of logging that followed. Most of the ancient stands are long gone, sold off for shipbuilding, construction, fuel.
These ones survived because a 17th-century baronial family, the Mollo family, planted or protected this particular stretch as part of their hunting estate. Their old hunting lodge — the Casino Mollo — is still standing on the property, a low stone building that looks exactly like a 1600s nobleman’s idea of “rustic.” The family donated the reserve to FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano, basically the Italian National Trust) in 2016, and now the FAI runs it, protects it, and lets you walk through it.
So what you’re looking at, when you look up at those trunks, is essentially the only intact glimpse left in Europe of what the Sila plateau used to be. Everywhere else, the giants got cut. Here, by some combination of luck and one family’s whim, they didn’t.
How to visit the Giants of Sila: tickets, hours, and directions
The reserve is in the comune of Spezzano della Sila, near Croce di Magara, about 5 km from Camigliatello Silano (which is the closest town and a reasonable lunch stop). Coming from the coast, you take the SS107 from Cosenza up into the Sila — it’s signposted, but Google Maps will get you there fine. There’s a parking area at the entrance.
Opening hours
The reserve is open from April through November, Tuesday to Sunday, from 10:00 AM. In August they also open on Mondays. Limited winter access exists for groups — sometimes via the Treno della Sila historic train experience, which combines the visit with a vintage train ride and is genuinely charming if your timing lines up. If you already know your dates, it’s worth checking ticket availability in advance — the reserve has a daily visitor cap and busy weekends sell through.
Ticket prices
On price: self-guided entry is €6 for adults, €3 reduced (kids 6-18, students up to 25), €14 for a family ticket. FAI members get in free. If you want the guided tour — and you should — it’s €12 full price, €6 reduced, €28 family. The tours are in Italian and last about an hour. They’re worth the extra few euros even if your Italian is wobbly; the guides know the trees personally, in that way only people who’ve worked somewhere for years can know a place, and you’ll absorb more than you expect just from being walked through it.
You can buy tickets at the gate, but in summer and on weekends I’d book ahead — you can grab entry tickets through GetYourGuide here
What to bring
The path is mostly flat and accessible. Wear something on your feet that handles a forest floor — proper shoes, not flip-flops. Bring water in summer. Bring a jacket in shoulder season, because at 1,400 meters the weather has opinions.
When to visit the Giants of Sila
Honestly, every season has its argument.
Summer
Is the obvious answer and the busiest one. You get the green canopy at its fullest, comfortable temperatures up on the plateau when the coast is melting at 38°C, and the easiest logistics. If you’re already vacationing somewhere in Calabria in July or August, a day up in the Sila is the move.
Autumn
Is my favorite. The wider Sila forests blaze with colour — beech and chestnut going copper and gold around the evergreen pines — and the reserve itself takes on this soft, slanted late-afternoon light that photographers lose their minds over. Cooler, quieter, fewer people.
Spring
Is gentle and green and a little muddy.
Winter
If you can get in, is the dream version — the pines under snow, absolute silence, the sense of being somewhere you shouldn’t be allowed to see. But access is limited, so plan ahead or chase it via the historic train tour.
Make a day of it: things to do near the Giants of Sila
Don’t drive an hour and a half up here just for the trees. Round it out.
Camigliatello Silano is 5 minutes away and has the kind of mountain-town energy where everyone is selling porcini, caciocavallo silano, cured pork, and chestnut everything. Eat there. Get the funghi if they’re in season.
Lago Cecita is a short drive and gorgeous for a slow lap on foot. Lago Arvo and the village of Lorica are further in but worth a longer day if you have it. The whole Sila National Park is dotted with marked trails — some easy, some serious — and you’ll see wolves on signage but, statistically, not in real life.
If you’re keen on the trains, the Ferrovia Silana runs vintage carriages from the 1920s on certain dates, and the combined Treno della Sila + Giganti package is one of those slow-tourism things that sounds touristy but is actually quietly lovely.
Why the Giants of Sila stick with you
I keep coming back to this place — both in person and in my head — and I’ve been trying to figure out why. It’s not the biggest forest I’ve ever been in. It’s not the oldest single tree on earth. The whole reserve, honestly, you can walk in under an hour.
I think it’s the scale of survival. You stand under one of these trees and do the math: planted or spared sometime in the 1600s, before most of the buildings you’ve ever lived in existed, before the country you live in existed, and it’s been standing there, growing in this one spot, ever since. Through every war, every government, every winter. While the rest of its forest got cut up and shipped out and burned, this one kept going.
That’s not a small thing to walk under, in a quiet place, in a region most people fly over.
Planning to go?
Book your entry ticket on GetYourGuide →
Go. Take an hour. Look up.
