The name of this comune is the result of a quarrel that ended badly. For centuries San Pietro had been a hamlet dependent on Caridà, together with Charopoli — today Garopoli; then the decree of the fourth of May 1811 made them separate comuni. Between 1862 and 1863 San Pietro changed its name to San Pier Fedele: faithful to the Bourbons and faithful to its own autonomy, against which it had even risen in revolt, and the word was there to say so to the neighbours. But on the twenty-second of March 1928 San Pier Fedele was incorporated into Caridà itself, and the new comune took the name of both: San Pietro di Caridà. As for Caridà, the name is said to come from the Greek charis, that is a charitable place; in the Greek of Calabria the village is called Karydiá, and in the old arms, beside the tower, there was a walnut tree, the whole surmounted by an Angevin crown recalling its loyalty to that dynasty.
On the fifth of February 1783 the Calabrian earthquake destroyed Caridà from top to bottom. The twelve friars who lived in the convent had counted, shortly before, one thousand five hundred and forty people at Caridà, four hundred and eighty-three at San Pietro and one hundred and eighty-six at Garopoli: the dead in the three places were ninety-six. The village was rebuilt, and a description of 1823 tells of it living on wheat, maize, fruit, vines, olives, chestnuts and mulberries. There were two convents: that of the Carmelites, founded at the end of the fifteenth century, with more than sixty rooms on the upper floor and a high wall all around, and that of the Dominicans, on the boundary with San Pietro. Both closed in 1652, when pope Innocent X abolished the small convents; the first, however, came back to life from 1741 with Observant friars, and on its ruins, after the earthquake, the church of the Carmine was built. Of the relations with the feudal lords a trace remains in a protest of 1751: the mayor of the time turned against the princess of Mileto, and in the civil records the vexations the village suffered were left listed.
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📅 Every year, on 20 January
On 20 January San Pietro di Caridà celebrates its patron Saint Sebastian; the town's other festivals, all religious, range from Our Lady of Mount Carmel to Saint Roch.
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 San Pietro di Caridà, but an easy day trip away.
