There are two roads to the name. The learned one takes it from the Latin paternum, the father's land, the estate inherited from him; the popular one from the dialect verb patirunu, «they suffered», in memory of the toil of the first inhabitants, people from Cosenza who fled when in 986 the emir Abulcasimo took and sacked the city. Paterno was born that way, as a casale: in 1459 it is among the twenty casali of Cosenza, and in a decree of Philip IV of 1644 among the twenty baglive. It was however a università with its own mayor and elected men, and since it depended on Cosenza it shared the city's demanial status: it never had a feudal lord. Calabro was added in 1863, to tell it from its namesakes.
In 1471 Francis of Paola founded here his second friary, finished around 1477, and lived in it for years: he left it on 2 February 1483 for France, sent by pope Sixtus IV, to whom the ailing king Louis XI had turned. He never came back to Italy: he died at Tours in 1507, at ninety-one. Of the complex there remain the church, the oratory, the cloister and the cave of penitence. The cloister has six ogival arches to a side, and in the corridors thirty-one lunettes tell the saint's life, while on the other side stand busts of Minim friars of the first half of the 17th century: who painted and carved them is not known.
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📅 Every year, on the second Sunday after Easter
On the second Sunday after Easter Paterno Calabro, a municipality of 1,366 inhabitants in the province of Cosenza, celebrates its patron San Francesco di Paola.
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 Paterno Calabro, but an easy day trip away.
