The name has nothing to do with bishops: it comes from the Greek episkopéō, to watch, and means lookout. Episcopia was born like that, as a Byzantine fortress set to hold the frontier against the Lombards, and the castle on its spur still keeps two towers unlike each other, the square Byzantine one and the cylindrical one the Normans added.
On the road to the monastery of Santa Maria del Piano there is a great hollow oak: tradition says that reapers found inside it the statue of the Madonna del Piano. The monastery was founded in 952 by three monks fleeing the Saracens, and in the refectory and the chapel there remain frescoes attributed to Giovanni Todisco, with the Flood among them. There are 1,467 residents.
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📅 Every year, on the second Sunday of May; on 5 August the Madonna del Piano is celebrated
Episcopia celebrates Saint Nicholas on the second Sunday of May, in the 16th-century Chiesa Madre di San Nicola di Bari; on 5 August, the Madonna del Piano is celebrated instead, whose statue, according to tradition, was found by a group of reapers in a hollow oak tree.
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Outside Episcopia, but an easy day trip away.
