Conflenti

The village is called so, in all likelihood, because of where it stands: it lies where two small watercourses come together, and it is from those confluences that Conflenti takes its name. Of villages, though, it counts more than one. People normally speak of Conflenti superiore, which here they call soprano, and of Conflenti inferiore, the sottano, and to these must be added the hamlet of San Mazzeo, which stands at nine hundred and three metres on the mountain opposite, towards Lamezia Terme. The communal territory climbs from about three hundred and fifty metres at the hamlet of Muraglie up to the shoulder of Monte Reventino, which passes fourteen hundred, while the two main villages stand at around five hundred and fifty.

The most important appointment is the feast of the Madonna di Visora, in the last week of August. It recalls a series of Marian apparitions and miracles said to have happened to various people of the place beginning in 1578; for this, up in the mountain part of the territory, a small church was built, known as the Querciuola. The main seat of the feast and the goal of the pilgrimages is, however, the basilica of Maria Santissima delle Grazie della Quercia di Visora, which on 31 May 2018 was raised to minor basilica: four and a half centuries passed between the first apparition and that decree. Then there is another feast which celebrates not an apparition but an escape: on 7 February they remember that the village survived the earthquake of 1783, the one that devastated half of Calabria. The calendar, for the rest, is crowded: Saint Andrew on 30 November, Saint Nicholas on the second Sunday of May, the Madonna della Querciuola on 2 July, Saint Anne at San Mazzeo on the first Sunday of August, the Immaculate Conception on 8 December and Saint Lucy on the 13th; and two fairs, one at San Mazzeo and one for the Madonna della Quercia at the end of August. The kitchen answers with buccunotti, mustazzuoli, panette and grispelle.