The village was founded by Albanians who arrived about 1480, after Skanderbeg's death, fleeing the Turkish conquest; they settled around the old Basilian monastery, which gave the place its name and is today one of only three Greek-Byzantine rite monasteries left in Italy. The first houses went up above the quarter they call Kroj, which in arbëresh means spring. Albanian is still spoken here, and the eastern rite still followed.
In the parish church, built in 1791, the high altar was pulled down in 1930 and made square again, so that communion might be given towards the four points of the earth; a wooden iconostasis divides the sanctuary from the nave. In 2024 the village raised in its square a bronze Skanderbeg on a rearing horse, four metres high, by an Albanian sculptor.
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📅 Every year, on 25 May (Saint Mary Hodegetria after Pentecost)
On 25 May San Basile, a municipality of 1,065 inhabitants in the province of Cosenza, celebrates the feast of its patron Saint John the Baptist; Saint Mary Hodegetria is the other patroness.
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 San Basile, but an easy day trip away.
