Castiglione Cosentino

Castiglione is one of the casali of Cosenza: in the ninth century the people of the city, put to flight by sudden Saracen assaults, took shelter on the surrounding hills and built there, one after another, a series of villages, and this is one of them. The name comes from the Castiglione family, who held the fief before the di Palma. Some place the ancient city of Arintha here, but the origin as a casale is the better founded account.

The village stands on a spur looking over the upper valley of the Crati, and its history can be read in two churches: the parish church of Santi Nicolò e Biagio, of the sixteenth century, originally called Santa Maria dell'Olmo, in the lower part of the old centre; and the church of Sant'Antonio da Padova with the Capuchin friary, of the seventeenth century, which stands above the town hall instead. A geographical curiosity: the railway station called Castiglione Cosentino is not in Castiglione Cosentino, but seven kilometres away, in the Quattromiglia quarter of the comune of Rende.