The patron saint of Pomarico is Saint Michael the Archangel, whose feast, from 7 to 9 May, is the year's main event: during these days ancient traditions are renewed, such as the offering of wax to the saint and the procession on the triumphal cart. The offering of wax commemorates an event from 1527, when Pomarico was spared a plague epidemic: to thank its patron saint, the town offered thirty pounds of worked white wax, a gesture of great value considering that, at the time, the price of a kilo of wax equalled that of an entire quintal of wheat.
The mother church of San Michele Arcangelo preserves paintings by Pietro Antonio Ferro, dated 1601, and by Andrea Vaccaro, a wooden statue of the saint dating from around 1400, and a fine 16th-century antiphonary. In the Norman period the town belonged as a hamlet to the county of Montescaglioso, and later remained for a long time subject to the Benedictine abbey of San Michele Arcangelo, a dispute that ended only in 1714. Among the many feudal lords who succeeded one another over the centuries, Francesco II del Balzo rebuilt the church, while the Donnaperna family built, in the second half of the 18th century, the great marquisal palace.
