The name of the village has long been argued over. It may come from the Latin palumbus, the dove, with the suffix marking the place where doves nested; or from palumbarius, a falcon that ate doves; or again from the dialect palummane, the pole held in the hand, and in favour of this last the arms are cited, where a man's bare arm holds a club. Meanwhile the ground has given up a late Hellenistic statuette of Hercules in the act of attacking, and from an inscription found nearby Theodor Mommsen concluded that Romulea stood here, a Samnite city destroyed in the 3rd century BC. At Piano Laroma a theatre, buildings and paved streets have come to light, probably belonging to Cluviae.
The other place of the village lies inside a cave. In the Grotta di Sant'Angelo, whose entrance is thirty-five metres wide, the Romanesque apse of the rock-cut church of Sant'Agata d'Ugno survives in squared blocks, and with it four cisterns that gathered rainwater and the water running off the rock. The only old document that names it is a bull of Honorius III on the possessions of the abbey of San Martino in Valle; for the rest tradition speaks, holding that the church was built over a temple of Bona and telling of new mothers who bathed their breasts with the water of the cave to have milk. The cult of Saint Michael the Archangel, they say, came later, brought by those very basins.
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📅 Every year, on 3 November
On 3 November Palombaro celebrates its patron the Madonna della Libera; the town also celebrates the patronal feast of the Assumption on 15 August, with its octave in the Tornelli district.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
