The vocal beauty of this church continues to be heard through the centuries and also through the descriptions of the numerous travelers who visited these places, which represented among the stages from the Grand Tour (a fundamental element of the aristocratic education in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries).

The history of the settlement dates back to the time of ancient Greece. The Greeks known as this town Skylletion (references to it had been already made in 6th hundred years BC), while in Roman situations it was about Basilica of Santa Maria della Roccella. Borgia. Italy called Schilacium or Scolacium.

Old authors, such as Strabone and Pliny, attributed the building blocks from the Greek city to Menestown, who landed in these lands, through the Trojan War. According to some other star, resumed also by Cassiodoro, the town was founded by Ulisse.

Borgia, like Scolacium, was under Byzantine guideline, in the tenth, eleventh and 15th decades. Squillace was dominated with the Aragonese and in 1494 exceeded onto Goffredo Borgia, the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI,, as a dowry. From that instant, the Borgia ruled those lands, until 1735, and gave the town its current name. This territory was always filled and was selected by anyone who wished to dominate Calabria. Roberto the Guiscardo, Norman king of Puglia, Calabria and Sicily, resided here briefly, from 1059 to 1085.

The date of construction from the Basilica of Santa Maria provoked controversy among scholars. It had been hypothesized which the church was constructed through the reign of Constantine I, or afterwards, in the V-VI or VII-VIII hundreds of years. It’s very likely how the basilica was built by Greek orthodox monks prior to the Norman conquest.

The church, whose ruins have been preserved even today, was built-in the Norman period, in the early years of the reign of Sicily, and dates back to the years 1130-1150. Nevertheless, it’s Byzantine affects are evident.