The village is thought to have been founded by ascetic monks who, after the eighth century, when the Muslims took Sicily, were pushed northwards and settled in this part of Calabria; the name comes from the devotion those monks had for Agatha, the martyr of Catania. So the village carries the name of a Sicilian saint because the people who founded it were Sicilian. It stands on an ancient alluvial terrace sheer above the Esaro, ringed by mountain chains set out like a diadem; the highest pass, that of the Melara, is at more than one thousand three hundred metres and is one of the highest in the region, and until the road was built — the works began in 1882 — there were not many ways in.
The first written source is of 1075: the Chronicon Amalfitanum says that Sant'Agata was occupied by Robert Guiscard. The account is by Geoffrey Malaterra, the Benedictine whom count Roger charged with writing down the deeds of the Normans, and it is a story about hunger. The quartermaster tells Guiscard that there is nothing left to eat and no money either, and that in any case there would be nowhere to buy, because all around there are only fortified places with their gates barred. Guiscard has with him some Slavs who know the country well, and he sends them out at night to raid cattle, reasoning that after a feast day the guards will be less watchful; he says he will follow with the knights. Instead he pretends to go to bed, dresses as they do and sets out with the raiders without being recognised. They take the cattle; before dawn the pursuers catch up with them; only then does Guiscard reveal who he is and lead them into the fight. They win, and at daybreak he rides back with his foot soldiers mounted on the horses taken from the pursuers — and his own knights, who had looked for him in vain inside the camp, come out to meet him as an enemy, realising their mistake only when he is within earshot. The source, incidentally, does not take Malaterra at his word: those pursuers, it says, were certainly not the two hundred knights he writes of, and were probably a unit of the regular Byzantine army.
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📅 Every year, on 5 February
On 5 February Sant'Agata di Esaro celebrates its patroness Saint Agatha, whose name also appears in the town's name; the museum of knowledge and taste is in the historic centre.
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 Sant'Agata di Esaro, but an easy day trip away.
