Saracena has 3,964 inhabitants on a rocky hill in the valley of the Garga, at the foot of the Orsomarso mountains, inside the Pollino park. Not far off opens the cave of Sant'Angelo, a karst cavity at seven hundred and fifty metres that was inhabited from the early Neolithic to the middle Bronze Age. The name of the village comes from the Saracens, who according to local tradition established a colony here around the year nine hundred.
The legend says that the army of Constantinople then destroyed the town, and that the few survivors fled led by a dishevelled woman wrapped in a sheet. That woman has ended up on the municipal gonfalon, which shows her fleeing with the words Universitas terrae Saracinae, and in a fresco on the chapel of Sant'Antonio. In 1275 Saracena was the fourth centre by population in the diocese of Cassano; in the nineteenth century it held a section of the Giovine Italia, the «Chiesa del Garga», and Antonio Prioli, sentenced for political reasons, died in prison in 1855: Luigi Settembrini recalls him in his Ricordanze.
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📅 Every year, on 20 February, with the torchlight procession the evening before
Saracena celebrates Saint Leo, protector of the town since 1630, on 20 February, with a torchlight procession the evening before crossing the whole town.
📅 Every year, on the second Sunday of August
Saracena celebrates Saint Leo a second time on the second Sunday of August, after the February feast.
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 Saracena, but an easy day trip away.
