Iron has always been dug here. In Roman times a colony of damnata ad metalla, those condemned to forced labour in the mines, was set up between Pazzano and Stilo; a document of 1094 records the miners' village in Norman times. On 10 December 1524 Charles V gave these mines to Cesare Fieramosca, brother of the Ettore of the challenge of Barletta, for services rendered; three years later they went back to the royal domain. In 1724 cannon began to be cast here, and under the Bourbons the twenty-five mines of Pazzano made this village the leading mining centre of the whole south: the ore went down to the royal ironworks at Mongiana.
When the mines closed, people left. From the nineteen fifties the emigrants of Pazzano gathered at Brookvale, a suburb of Sydney they ended up calling Pazzaniedu, and not far off, at Narraweena, they still hold the feast of the Holy Saviour every year; another community is at Aliquippa, in Pennsylvania. In the village, since the nineteen eighties, an ecomuseum holds together what is left of the ironworks and foundries of Calabria. About the name, on the other hand, nothing has ever been settled: six etymologies are in circulation, and none has won.
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📅 On 19 March (Saint Joseph) and on the first Sunday after 5 August (Most Holy Saviour)
On 19 March Pazzano celebrates its patron Saint Joseph with a procession of the statue; the most important feast remains that of the Most Holy Saviour, in August.
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 Pazzano, but an easy day trip away.
