Capistrano

There are three explanations of the name, two of them proposed by men born here: padre Concezio Galloro read it as Greek for «I stand under the mountain», for the Coppari that rises above it; Giovanni Manfrida derived it from capestro, the halter, for the subjection of the villagers to the Basilian monks who had a convent here. A third scholar thinks instead of the shepherd's staff. In the documents the name is written Capisticum in 1211.

In the mother church hangs a Baptism of Christ in the Jordan attributed since 1966 to Renoir: the story goes that the painter came up here in December 1881, invited by a village priest he had met in Naples, on his way to Palermo to paint Wagner's portrait. In the same church is the tomb of the nobleman Pietro Bongiorno, of 1770, in white Carrara marble.