The town stands at 800 metres at the gates of the Sila Grande, among woods of chestnut, beech and conifers, and the municipal territory climbs to the 1813 metres of Serra Stella. The first settlement is of the ninth century and was founded by a group of refugees from Cosenza fleeing the Saracen raids. The oldest quarter is that of via San Biagio, also called Pedalina, and it was the first because a spring rises there which they call frisulu, that is a place rich in water: tradition tells that in that marshy spot the first inhabitants found an effigy of saint Blaise, built him a church and made him their patron. In the Nord Viale quarter, once called ruga d'ì pielli, the street of the ragged, dozens of little lanes branch out like a labyrinth — probably to confuse thieves and be able to catch them — and in the attic of one house there are still the pignatelle d'ì briganti, holes lined with clay where money and valuables were hidden, or more probably where gunpowder was kept safe from damp. On the doors of some houses the dates can still be read: 1557 in via San Francesco, 1601 in via Croce.
The convent of San Francesco was built in 1474 by the saint himself: chronologically it is the third of his churches, after those of Paola, his native town, and of Paterno, but it is the first in the world of the order of the Minims. With the administrative reorganisation of general Championnet, in 1799, Spezzano became a comune of its own within the canton of Cosenza; later it was divided into Spezzano Grande and Spezzano Piccolo, and in 1927 the two were reunited by authority into a single centre, which took the name Spezzano della Sila. Between 1940 and 1943 the town was one of the 14 comuni of Calabria designated by the fascist authorities to receive Jewish refugees in free internment: the internees were 22, mostly Poles. In September 1943 the 5 who were still here were freed with the arrival of the Allied army, and so were the 14 who had meanwhile been transferred to Ferramonti di Tarsia; the 3 members of the Buchwald family, sent to Lombardy in 1941, also escaped deportation.
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📅 Every year, from 1 to 3 February; September brings the Saint Francis feast with drums and a novena
Spezzano della Sila celebrates Saint Blaise from 1 to 3 February, in the church dedicated to him. The feast of Saint Francis, the quintessential feast of Spezzano, opens in September with drumming through the streets.
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The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Spezzano della Sila, but an easy day trip away.
