The name comes from the citrons, citrus in Latin and kitron in Greek, that grew in these fields. But the thing that marked Cetraro most is a deed of gift: duchess Sichelgaita, wife of Robert Guiscard, made a present of the town to the abbot of Montecassino, and from 1086 to 1810, seven hundred years, Cetraro was governed by the Benedictines. The coat of arms still says so: a citron tree and an abbot's crozier, surmounted by a mitre with the words Civitas Citrarii.
The harbour had its black day in 1534, when the corsair Barbarossa burned seven Spanish galleons there that were still being built. In the twentieth century the town grew around the textile factory of Donato Faini, which made silk swimming costumes and drew workers in from the villages around; then came lycra, cheaper, the factory failed to change and went under. On the twenty-first of June 1980 the 'ndrangheta killed here Giovanni Losardo, town councillor and anti-mafia campaigner.
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📅 Every year, on 11 July, with the statue carried out to sea on the largest fishing boat
Cetraro celebrates Saint Benedict of Nursia on 11 July. The patron's statue, kept in the church dedicated to him, is carried in procession and placed on the largest fishing boat, taken out to sea followed by other fishing boats, boats and dinghies.
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