The mother church of Grottole, Santa Maria Maggiore, comes with a former Dominican friary attached to it: the parish church of the town and a convent share the same wall. Around them, a place that changed hands for centuries — Norman from 1042, then Angevin, then held by the Orsini Del Balzo, the Sanchez De Luna d'Aragona, the Caracciolo, the Spinelli — until the Sanseverino of Bisignano, who took the fief in 1738 and whom Grottole only managed to shake off in 1874.
What to see
The furnishings that carry the most weight are from the 18th century and they are wooden: the altars, the choir gallery and the choir stalls all belong to that period. Around them sits what a mother church accumulates over centuries of small-town life, that is a large number of canvases and statues, arrived at different moments and for different reasons. It is not a coherent set and does not pretend to be one: it is a town's store of devotions, where each piece came in when it came in.
The piece worth hunting for, though, is a sculpture: a stone Madonna and Child of the Lucanian school, meaning it came out of workshops in the region rather than being ordered from outside. It is the finest thing the church owns, and it is made to be looked at from close up, not from the back of the nave.
Visiting
The church stands inside the built-up area, on the ridge at 482 metres between the Basento and Bradano valleys, and you can walk to it from anywhere in town. No opening hours are published: aim for service times or ask at the parish. The town has just under two thousand inhabitants, and asking works better than looking for a sign. If you find the door shut, walk around the building: the former friary attached to the church is easy to pick out from outside, and it shows how much room the friars' community took up. Once inside, look up and towards the far end first: the choir gallery and the choir stalls are the two parts that date the interior.
Our editors' tip
Give half an hour to the church of San Rocco as well, the other important church in Grottole: in the main nave hangs an enormous 17th-century polyptych by Pietro Antonio Ferro showing the seven corporal works of mercy. The cult of the pilgrim saint spread here after the plague of 1655, and the two churches, taken one after the other, hold nearly everything the town has kept.