Verbicaro has 3,212 inhabitants inside the Pollino park, and the name most probably comes from the Latin vervecarius, "shepherd". In 1797 the scholar Lorenzo Giustiniani, describing the town in his dictionary of the Kingdom of Naples, explained what that meant in practice. The land gave good grapes, above all the zibibbi, which dried could have earned a great deal; but the sheep and goat business kept most of the ground as bare pasture, when mulberries and olives could have been planted on it. And he closed with the sentence that explains all the rest: in this town the sheep dealers are the most powerful men.
Then there are two facts, one dark and one singular. In August 1911, after a cholera epidemic had struck much of the population, a rising broke out: three people were killed, among them the mayor and the town clerk, and the town hall was set on fire. And every year, in the night between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, the battenti still go out: penitents dressed in red, barefoot and bare-legged, who strike their legs with the cardillo, a piece of cork studded with nine glass points, until they bleed, and walk three times round the village marking the streets with their bloodied hands.
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📅 Every year, on 2 July, with the flower carpets and the Zigni torchlight procession
Verbicaro celebrates Our Lady of Grace on 2 July. In the morning, flower-petal carpets are prepared along the town's streets, crossed in the late afternoon by the procession, which meets the Zigni torchlight procession at its midpoint.
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 Verbicaro, but an easy day trip away.
