The co-patron saints of Montemurro are Saint George and Saint Maurice, celebrated on 23 April; Saint Roch is venerated as glorious protector, with celebrations from 16 to 18 August in the church dedicated to him, rebuilt on the foundations of the 17th-century one after the 1857 earthquake.
The town's name comes from the Castrum Montis Murri, a castle destroyed by an earthquake in 1343, which stood where today's Piazza Giacinto Albini now lies. The territory belonged to the fief of Montescaglioso, to the episcopal see of Tricarico, and was ruled by the Sanseverino and Carafa families. The sanctuary of Maria Santissima di Servigliano, rebuilt in 1911 on the Santo Jaso plateau, replaced the original church in the district of Servigliano, already mentioned in a 1068 charter through which Roberto di Montescaglioso, nephew of Robert Guiscard, granted it to the episcopal church of Tricarico: that building was destroyed by the 1907 landslide.
Montemurro native Giacinto Albini was the architect of the so-called Lucanian insurrection, the anti-Bourbon revolt that allowed an already-liberated Basilicata to be handed over to Garibaldi. After Italian unification, Montemurro too was marked by the phenomenon of brigandage: the former Montemurro shepherd Antonio Cotugno, known as «Culopizzuto», led a band of brigands in anti-Savoy protest.
