Zumpano

Zumpano was founded by the people of Cosenza: when the Arab invasion of Abulcassino came, in 977, many fled the city and settled here for good, on a slope that was easy to defend. With the arrival of the Normans a network of towers and castles was built along the Crati, posts independent of one another but within reach of each other, and the tower of Zumpano is one of them. The coat of arms shows that very tower with two lions at its base: for the heralds they are Norman strength, but in the village they say the two lions are the hamlets of Motta and Rovella, guarding the centre. The name too can be seen shifting in the papers: de Cimpano in 1324, Zimpano in 1326, De Cympano in 1432, Zompano in the sixteenth century.

Zumpano was one of the twenty-one baglive of the casali of Cosenza, and in 1644 it was bought, together with all the others, by the Grand Duke of Tuscany; it freed itself from him with the revolt of Celico, on the twenty-third of May 1647. Its rank has moved as much as its name: in 1807 the French made it a università, in 1811 it was reduced to a hamlet of Lappano, and five years later the Bourbons raised it to a comune with Lappano itself among its hamlets — until 1834, when Lappano was detached and made a comune of its own. The building that is now the town hall was probably not a noble palace to begin with but a store for those refugees from Cosenza; in the sixteenth century it housed a court that dealt summarily with brigands, and in 1830 the patriot Angelo Ritacca opened in it one of the first Carbonari lodges of the province.