Patron saint festival In 308 days
Feast of Saint Roch
📅 Every year, on 18 and 19 August
On 18 and 19 August Castelmezzano celebrates Saint Roch, in a village of eight hundred people wedged among the spires of the Lucanian Dolomites.
When the Saracens forced people to move, the story goes a shepherd named Paolino found the new place: steep rocks from whose tops invaders could be driven off with rolling boulders. The name comes from the Norman castle, Castrum Medianum, the castle in the middle: it stood between those of Pietrapertosa and Brindisi Montagna.
In the chapel of the Santo Sepolcro there is a wooden statue of the fourteenth century, the Madonna dell'Ascensione. The legend says two fishermen found her on the shore and she asked to be carried up here; at the spot where the chapel now stands she became too heavy to move. Then, once the chapel was built, two little praying sailors appeared beside her, resembling the two men. There are 852 residents.
The Castelmezzano guide
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🎉 Festivals and feasts in Castelmezzano 1
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Near Castelmezzano
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Castelmezzano, but an easy day trip away.
Chiesa di Sant'Ignazio di Loyola 📍 Carpi · 11 km Jesuit church of 1670-1682 in Carpi, on a Greek-cross plan, with scagliola altars and the diocesan museum. Basilica cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta 📍 Carpi · 11 km Carpi cathedral begun in 1514 to Peruzzi's design, reopened in 2017 after the 2012 earthquake. Chiesa di Santa Maria in Castello 📍 Carpi · 12 km Romanesque pieve of 1184, the oldest church in Carpi, with a Peruzzi façade and twelfth-century frescoes. Chiesa di San Bernardino da Siena 📍 Carpi · 12 km Patron church of Carpi, begun in 1604, with the reliquary bust of Saint Bernardino of Siena.