The name is Greek, from the Byzantine title of kouropalates. But the local tradition is older: at the ford of the Trionto, so the story goes, the men of Croton beat Sybaris by playing on flutes the tune to which the Sybarite horses had been trained to dance; a valley near the village is still called La Strage, the slaughter. Legend has the survivors refounding their city on these hills.
In the early Middle Ages the village grew around tufa caves that monks had hollowed out for themselves; at Santa Maria ad Gruttam a Byzantine Madonna is still frescoed on the wall of one of them. In the church of the Rosary an altar of 1574 carries a polyptych with the three mysteries known at the time. The castle here watched the transhumance road and the silver coming down from the mines of Longobucco.
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📅 Every year, on 17 January
On 17 January Cropalati celebrates its patron Saint Anthony the Abbot; the Chiesa del Santissimo Rosario, dating from around the 10th century, was known before the year 1000 as the church of the Annunciation.
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 Cropalati, but an easy day trip away.
