Scigliano

The comune is made of nine localities — Agrifoglio, Calvisi, Celsita, Cupani, Diano, Lupia, Petrisi, Porticelle, Traversa — and not one of them is called Scigliano: the name is on the map and in the history, not on a sign at the entrance to a village. As for its origin, some think of a Latin landowner named Sillius with the suffix -anus, others of a Greek name. Down in the valley the Savuto is crossed by a bridge they call Hannibal's, or Sant'Angelo's, because legend sends the Carthaginian troops over it: some scholars date certain courses of it to Roman times, others hold the bridge to be medieval. The archaeologist Edoardo Galli described it as some thirteen metres high and twice as wide, and recalled that the Savuto is among the Calabrian rivers most feared for its floods.

The real history of Scigliano, though, is that of a town that bought its freedom back by weight of gold. In the sixteenth century it was one of the best-known comuni of the kingdom of Naples, and the Firrao, the di Gennaro and the d'Aquino tried more than once to make a fief of it: every time the citizens paid to remain the king's land. In May 1631 the viceroy of Naples sold it to the prince of Castiglione, Cesare d'Aquino, and the redemption came on 12 September 1636; in that same year Flaminio Cimino made of it a poem in dialect octaves, «Lu ricattu de Sciglianu». The irony is that what dismembered it was not the barons but a decree: once feudalism had fallen, on 4 May 1811 ancient Scigliano was divided into four comuni, and in 1820 the other hamlets obtained autonomy. Between 1845 and 1847 a scientific and literary fortnightly, «Il Pitagora», was printed here.