The church of San Vincenzo stands in the upper part of San Severino Lucano, above the row of houses the old centre lined up along its single main street. It is dedicated to Saint Vincent Ferrer, the town's patron saint, whose feast falls on the second Sunday of July. The settlement is young by Lucanian standards: the first nucleus formed around the 15th century, tied to the farming colonisation promoted by the Abbey of Sagittario, and until 1806 this land belonged to Chiaromonte. Only under the Napoleonic reform did San Severino become a comune in its own right, adding “Lucano” to its name in 1820.
What to see
The façade is the part that held: this is where the building keeps its original structure. Do not expect grand architecture, because San Severino has none — its recent history left it no major monuments, and the town's two main churches are worth the walk for what they hold rather than for their scale.
What this one holds is a wooden crucifix from 1500, older than anything on view in the other church in the village: the Chiesa Madre on piazza Marconi, dedicated to Maria Santissima degli Angeli, still keeps its eighteenth-century layout. Of the two, San Vincenzo is the one with the older piece inside.
Visiting
You go up on foot. The old centre grew unplanned, terraced along the main road, and to reach the church you have to leave that road and take the alleys typical of mountain villages, where stone portals and small palazzi from the second half of the 19th century turn up. The village sits at 877 metres and the church occupies its high point: the climb is short, but it is a climb. Look at the façade before going in, because it is the oldest thing you will see here, and only then go inside for the crucifix.
Our editors' tip
Do not walk back the way you came: go down instead to the lower part of the village, where the three fountains have been put back into service and one has been properly restored; it takes only a few minutes to cross the settlement from its highest point to its lowest. And if you can choose your date, come on the second Sunday of July: it is Saint Vincent Ferrer's day, and the church stops being somewhere to visit and becomes the centre of everyone's day.