The patron saint of San Chirico Nuovo is Saint Roch, celebrated on 22 August: at the centre of the mother church a portal opens beneath a niche housing his statue.
The town's mother church, dedicated to San Nicola di Bari and facing Piazza Roma, dates from the period between the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and is fitted with a spired bell tower 18 metres tall with a large clock. With the Norman conquest, the defence of San Chirico was included in the county of Tricarico and assigned to the Sanseverino family, who around 1160 built, around an old tower, an imposing castle of which today nothing remains but one tower: on its remains stand today first the town hall and then the state middle school. During Angevin rule the fief passed through succession and marriage to several families, before returning finally to the Sanseverino in 1285.
