Martone stands on a hill in the Locride, hemmed in by two torrent beds, and its name is a riddle: some derive it from a Greek family called Martis, some from the god Mars, because a Roman camp is said to have stood here at the time of the war between Augustus and Sextus Pompey, and some from a Norman family that came in the train of Robert Guiscard. What is known is that the village grew up between the seventh and eighth centuries around communities of Greek-Byzantine monks who had taken shelter down here during the iconoclast struggles, and who brought with them the cult of the Virgin of the Assumption.
Of those monks there remain the monastery of Sant'Anania at Gujune and one tiny, precious object: a signum pacis, a metal plaque with the risen Christ and the Virgin, which in the Byzantine rite was given to the bride and groom to kiss at the end of the wedding. And there remains an episode that says a great deal about the place. A codex of 1308 relates that the monks of Saint Nicodemus came here, to Bucito — the old name of Martone, which appears already in a deed of 1119 — found the church of the Mother of God and judged the site most suitable for them; but the local people were celebrating the feast of the Assumption, and the monks, failing to find the quiet they were after, went back the way they had come.
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📅 On 23 April and the second Sunday of August
On 23 April and the second Sunday of August Martone celebrates its patron Saint George the Martyr; the summer feast has as its symbol the «Ntinna», the beech greasy-pole tree.
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The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
