In 981 Taverna was destroyed, and with it the borough of Casale. Those who escaped climbed the hill they called Serra Alta and fortified themselves there by digging ditches all around: from those ditches, fossati, comes the name of the village. The word itself had been brought by the Byzantines, and meant much the same as castrum, a fortified place. The second half of the name is recent: until 1864 the village was called simply Fossato, and Serra was added to it by royal decree, to tell it apart from the others.
Fossato was for a long time the head of one of the three communities born from the destruction of Trischene, and it had jurisdiction over a number of settlements around it: Pentone, Sorbo San Basile, Maranise, Savuci, Noce. Then those places left one after another, Pentone in 1838, Sorbo San Basile in 1850, and the municipality shrank to what it is today: a village of a few hundred souls on the southern slopes of the Sila Piccola, on the right bank of the Alli. It had been a fief of the Ruffo family until 1464, when it passed to the royal domain.
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📅 Every year, on the first Sunday of August
On the first Sunday of August Fossato Serralta, a municipality of 614 inhabitants in the province of Catanzaro, celebrates its patron San Francesco da Paola.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Fossato Serralta, but an easy day trip away.
