The patron saint of Salandra is Saint Roch, the thaumaturge saint, proclaimed patron after the town was struck by plague in 1656. His feast falls on 18 August.
The first official records of Salandra date back to a papal bull of 1060; in 1119 Countess Emma of Sicily, wife of Rodolfo di Montescaglioso and daughter of Roger I of Altavilla, donated the fief of Salandra to the Benedictine abbey of San Michele Arcangelo di Montescaglioso. The town actively took part in the 1799 uprisings for the Parthenopean Republic, was severely hit by the 1857 earthquake that devastated Basilicata, and in 1861, during the post-unification banditry, was attacked by the bands of Crocco and Borjes: defended by the national guard, it resisted for a long time from the heights of the feudal castle before being overrun.
The mother church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, was built between the 11th and 12th centuries, almost entirely destroyed by the 1857 earthquake and later rebuilt; its elegant 18th-century portal is decorated with two Romanesque-style lions, and the interior holds a polyptych depicting the Annunciation by Simone da Firenze from 1530, another 1580 polyptych by Antonio Stabile, and a lunette by Pietro Antonio Ferro.
