San Vito sullo Ionio

The village was founded by the Normans in the valley of the Beltrame, between the eleventh and the twelfth centuries, and tradition has it begin with a piece of hydraulic engineering: count Roger had a barrage built across the valley to form an artificial basin, and of that work there remain walls in a place called Murorotto, broken wall. The patron is Saint Vitus, and the story goes that it was he who saved the town from a flood. The comune was simply San Vito: the «sullo Ionio» was added to it by a royal decree of 1863, as happened in those years to many places that had to tell themselves apart from their namesakes.

What kept San Vito on its feet were the water mills, the mulberry, the working of silk and above all briar pipes: they were made here in great quantity, and many families worked at them. The earthquake of the second half of the seventeen hundreds destroyed much of the built-up village. Of the older buildings there remain the ruins of the Carmelite convent, which is of 1541, and the neoclassical parish church dedicated to Saint Vitus the martyr. From the nineteen fifties onwards emigration and the growth of services wiped out the rural economy: the old trades are carried on now by a few people, who learned them from their fathers.