"Garibaldipoli", the city of Garibaldi, should have been founded in Calabria, in honor of the Hero of the two worlds. The story, completely unknown - because the idea was not carried out - is reconstructed through documents and accurate research by the historian Giuseppe Monsagrati in the volume "Garibaldipoli and other stories of land and sea" (Rubbettino publisher, pages 98 euro 13)

It was not supposed to be a metropolis but a small modern urban center, with an adjoining spa, which, in essence, in the project, widened the boundaries of the already existing town of Galatro in Calabria: a historic center located at the confluence of the Fermano rivers and Metramo. The history of the missing Garibaldipoli has a certain something daring, and is part of those episodes that remain little known in post unified Italy; when the South, which seemed to have to project itself towards the Mediterranean, began to record the first betrayals of the state, finding itself, at the center of adventures and business speculations too. Creator of the initiative  was, in fact, an equivocal character, with Pirandello traits, who had the only merit of having been alongside Garibaldi, in the first Sicilian campaign, as "supplier of the 1860 expedition" (in this way he is mentioned in the Letters of Giuseppe Garibaldi).

The name, of the creator of "Garibaldipoli", is Luigi Del Negri: a Genoese merchant who in the future will be defined by the chronicles, as an adventurer without capital and creator of unaccomplished works, from which arises the suspicion of a fraudulent vocation. However, before following the developments of this story it is worth asking - as the author of the book does - how Del Negri had come into contact with Galatro, to the point of imagining the transformation, urban planning and name, in Garibaldipoli. It is probable that the name of Galatro emerged from the frequentations of the "character" Del Negri with a representative of the Galatrese democracy who he had met in Naples and presented as the son "of a homeland of ardent Jacobins", as Galatro, the town of Nicola Garigliano, was considered. He was a medical student who had taken part in the Neapolitan motion of 15 July that preceded Garibaldi's arrival in the Neapolitan city. How things really went is not known (other research is in progress).  In fact, it appears that the Municipal Council of Galatro on April 26, 1862 unanimously voted a resolution that authorized the foundation of Garibaldipoli, visualizing the potential for development of the territory, as well as the repercussions of the great privilege for having been chosen as a site to honor Giuseppe Garibaldi. It was said that Galatro deserved to be chosen also, for its ancient history of “Locrese colony”, and the map of the future city was designed, informing the Generalissimo. There is no news of Garibaldi's response to the embarrassing pressures of the creators of Garibaldipoli but the project went on until the crucial moment of finding the funds to build the new city that was to enhance the most memorable features of Garibaldi's epic.  The Marsala district, the Milazzo district, the Magenta district and the Solferino district, and then the prefecture, the town hall, the cathedral, four churches and the prison had been foreseen. The dream vanished when most of the founding members of the project pulled back and Garibaldi, who, especially after Aspromonte, was an era of public recognition, did not have a city with his name. He was consoled, however, when he heard that a small town in Sicily had decided to call itself Nizza di Sicilia, in honor of his hometown that Napoleon III had stolen from him and from Italy ,three years earlier