Crotone, Italy

Crotone (the ancient Greek city of Kroton) was, in its day among the most important colonial settlements of Magna Graecia, with a school of medicine that was famous throughout the classical world and closely linked with the prowess of the city's athletes, who regularly scooped all the honours at the Olympic Games back in Greece. In 530 BC the mathematician and metaphysician Pythagoras took up residence here and it later went on to be the first of the Greek cities in Calabria. But its prosperity was always hindered by the scourge of malaria. Crotone today has an agreeable, unspoiled old centre, and makes a good base for the beaches that spread to the south and for the Greek ruins at Capo Colonna.