San Calogero

The name comes from the monks, in two ways. The town takes its title from a settlement of Basilian monks dedicated to saint Calogero — today's convent of Sant'Opolo — which arose in the Byzantine age; but calogero, in Greek, is the fusion of kalós and géros, «good old man», and it was the name by which the monks themselves were called. The birth of the town is said to go back to the tenth century, when around the Basilian monastery gathered the houses of those who worked the monks' lands. The comune is made of three centres with different feudal histories — San Calogero, Calimera and San Pietro — and the oldest of the three is thought to be Calimera, which bears a Greek name too: Καλημέρα, good morning. The territory lies between two streams of constant flow, the Mammella and the San Marino, and there they grow wine grapes, vegetables, fruit, olives, citrus and cereals.

The earthquake of 1783 destroyed almost everything, and the new settlement was rebuilt a little away from the old site, at the places called Il giardino and Le vigne, to a design by the architect and town-planner Ermenegildo Sintes, a pupil of Luigi Vanvitelli. In 1811, under the government of Murat, San Calogero and Calimera became a single comune, with the first as its seat; and at the end of August 1860 Garibaldi's red shirts passed along these roads, on the twenty-seventh through San Pietro. At Calimera there remains the castle, which was perhaps one of the residences of count Roger the Norman, and the ancient Basilian monastery of Sant'Opolo, which with the Normans became a settlement of Benedictine nuns; at the place called Piane, in a limestone quarry, primitive oval-shaped tombs have been found. The most curious feast is the one on the first Sunday of August, because it alternates from year to year: one year saint Calogero is celebrated, the next year saint Paola.