Mangone stands at eight hundred metres on the western side of the Sila Grande, in a position commanding the upper valley of the Savuto, seventeen kilometres from Cosenza. It was founded in the ninth century by people from the coast who moved inland to escape the Saracen raids. Its hamlet, Piano Lago — at first Pian del Lago — sits at six hundred and twenty-seven metres on a saddle between the Sila and the coastal chain, and that saddle is a watershed: the water that falls on one side goes to the Crati, the water that falls on the other to the Savuto. Being a passage, the comune has two railway stations. The parish church is of the sixteen hundreds and keeps its original portal and bell tower, with an eighteenth-century high altar; the patroness is the Madonna dell'Arco, and the feast is the second Sunday of September.
Here was born Marco Berardi, the man they called re Marcone, the king of the Sila. He had been taught by the Waldensians of San Sisto and had taken up their ideas; after the massacre of the Waldensians, in 1561, he put together a band of rebels and made himself a small kingdom in the country around Crotone, with officials in charge of the administration and taxes imposed on the landowners. Then he turned the system of bounties upside down: he put two thousand ducats on the head of the feudal lord Marino Caracciolo, marquis of Bucchianico, and ten ducats on every Spanish soldier. He had military successes enough for the viceroy of Naples, the duke of Alcalá, to take the matter in hand himself and send a small army against him. Berardi died in the Sila after 1563.
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📅 Every year, on the second Sunday of September
On the second Sunday of September Mangone, a municipality of 1,823 inhabitants in the province of Cosenza, celebrates its patroness the Madonna dell'Arco.
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 Mangone, but an easy day trip away.
