Santo Stefano di Rogliano

Santo Stefano di Rogliano lies south-east of Cosenza, in the middle valley of the river Savuto, and the building that matters most is the sanctuary of Santa Liberata. The saint it is dedicated to is venerated as a virgin and martyr, and her hagiographic legend is one of those that stay in the mind: the wife of a Roman consul, Calsia, while her husband was away, gave birth to nine twin girls; overcome with shame at so numerous a birth, she ordered the midwife to drown them in the sea, but the midwife was a Christian, did not obey, and had all nine baptised — Ginevra, Vittoria, Eufemia, Germana, Marina, Marciana, Basilisa, Quiteria and, last, Liberata. The sisters are said to have died martyrs, at their own father's hand, during the persecution of Hadrian. It is a tradition that recent scholarship has largely disavowed, and that the source itself qualifies with the adverb that recurs inevitably in these biographies: she was probably martyred in the third or the fourth century.

The other churches of the village are the Matrice, San Rocco and Santa Maria del Soccorso; among the civil buildings there is Palazzo Parisio, and in the territory the mine of Carcarula. The train is still there: the Santo Stefano halt is on the Cosenza-Catanzaro Lido line, served by the Ferrovie della Calabria on the Cosenza-Marzi run. The arms and the banner were granted in 1999. But the thing for which this village has made itself known beyond Calabria is recent, and it is up in the air: the hot-air balloon rally, organised by the Calabra Savuto in Volo association with the comune's backing, with the balloons, the helicopter rides, the parachute displays, the days set aside for schools and for disabled people, the fair and the evening concerts. And it is because of the balloons that on the ninth of May of 2010 the twinning was made official with Fragneto Monforte, a village of the Sannio that has been organising international rallies for years.