The name may come from the Latin bostar, the ox stall, but the story told here is another one: when the first inhabitants went to pay their respects to the feudal lord and he asked how the beasts were doing, they answered that with them everything was un benestare, a being well — and the lord took that word and used it for the place. The name first appears in 1450, when this was a casale of Mocta Bubalina, today Bovalino Superiore, in the barony of Bianco. The earthquake of 1783 did damage here reckoned at thirty thousand ducats.
Its rank has been written and rewritten by decree. In 1807 Benestare was made a luogo of the government of Ardore; in 1811, when the comuni were instituted, it gained autonomy from Bovalino and jurisdiction over the village of Careri and the casale of Cirella; in 1836 a royal decree took Careri away, to become a comune with Natile, and in 1875 Cirella went to Platì. Only in 1883 did a decree of Umberto I detach it from the electoral section of Bovalino. Twice the village stood against authority: on the twenty-fourth of May 1906 the peasants demonstrated because the administration had cut free medical assistance for the poor, and the carabinieri opened fire, killing one and wounding nine; and in 1934, in the local Fascio headquarters, someone burned the party pennant — an inquiry was opened and the matter was never cleared up. At the referendum of 1946, of one thousand five hundred and sixty voters, one thousand four hundred and six chose the monarchy.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 29 September
On 29 September Benestare celebrates its patron Saint Michael the Archangel; the village's religious calendar also includes the feast of the Holy Rosary on the first Sunday of October.
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 Benestare, but an easy day trip away.
