The name is Roman: agellus, a little field. Below the hill ran a branch of the road that went down from Capua to Reggio, and whoever held the hill held the road, so the village was besieged often. Of the Saracens of the emirate of Amantea the story goes — and the sources give it as a legend — that they meant to take it by hunger, and that they gave up when the people threw down at them from the walls whole cheeses, made, the tale says, with the milk of their own women, to show that there was food here and to spare. The Normans of Robert Guiscard were more patient: in 1065 they besieged it for four months before obtaining its surrender.
In 1566 the fief was bought for thirty-eight thousand ducats by Alberico Cybo-Malaspina, prince of Massa; his family, Ligurian and Tuscan, held it until the end of feudalism, and under them the «state of Aiello» went from county to marquisate and then to duchy. The castle, which Leandro Alberti had called one of the first fortresses of the kingdom, was chosen as a home by a knight of the Cybo, who put into it a library of very rare works. The earthquake of 1905 brought down much of the town. The comune has changed its name twice and its shape once: in 1928 it took in Cleto and Serra, which a few years later took their autonomy back. And the library opened in 2024 is inside the old casa del Fascio.
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📅 Every year, on 5 February and on the first Sunday of May
On 5 February and on the first Sunday of May Aiello Calabro, a municipality of 1,907 inhabitants in the province of Cosenza, celebrates its patron San Geniale martire.
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 Aiello Calabro, but an easy day trip away.
