centro storico, di pianura, pianificato, a scacchiera, Oppido Mamertina, Oppido Vecchio (denominazione storica), Oppidum (denominazione storica)

After the catastrophic earthquake of 1783, Oppido Mamertina was entirely re-planned and rebuilt on a broader, gentler site. The Bourbon government, responding with surprising efficiency, dispatched engineers Winspeare and La Vega to design a new settlement. They created an exceptionally modern grid plan: long, wide, straight, perpendicular streets, with two parallel main arteries, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and Via Garibaldi, and several piazzas. This was rational, Enlightenment-era town planning imposed on a Calabrian landscape still trembling from seismic shock. Following a second severe earthquake in 1787, the provisional wooden barracks, hastily erected after the first disaster, were replaced with stone and brick buildings bound with lime mortar. The local nobility built their palaces flanking the great Piazza Mercato or along the principal axis. The result is a Baroque-era borgo of unusual regularity, a chessboard settlement born from ruin, its geometry a testament to eighteenth-century faith in order.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.