A journey to Calabria, in the deep south of Italy, to discover one of the rarest and most precious of citrus fruits: the bergamot.

Bergamot is the product of a natural cross-pollination between a lemon tree and a sour orange that occurred in Calabria in the mid-seventeenth century. It's very particular about its environment and fruits successfully only on a thin strip of land that runs for seventy-five kilometres from the Tyrrhenian coast to the shores of the Ionian Sea.

Mixing travel writing, history and horticulture, Helena Attlee's celebratory journey through Italy explores the special place that citrus holds in the Italian imagination.


Read by Francesca Dymond

Written by Helena Attlee

Abridged by Laurence Wareing

Produced by Kirsteen Cameron

First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2014. Show less