Conza della Campania

The earthquake of 23 November 1980, whose epicentre was very close by, levelled Conza entirely. The village has been rebuilt elsewhere, at the foot of the hill, and the old town has stayed uninhabited; but from the very rubble came out what lay beneath: the ruins of the Roman settlement, that is, ancient Compsa, which today is an archaeological area with the forum and the amphitheatre. Compsa had been an important centre of the Hirpini — Hannibal occupied it in 216 before Christ — and then Roman and Lombard, first an episcopal and later an archiepiscopal see; with time, and with earthquakes, it had lost weight to Sant'Angelo dei Lombardi and to Teora. Of the temporary settlement of prefabs, put up after the earthquake along the shore of the lake, hardly anyone lives there now.

The cathedral tells the same story, repeated more than once. It had been built on the remains of a Roman basilica, whose three-nave plan it had kept, and at the end of the right aisle the counts of the house of Gesualdo had made themselves a family chapel. The earthquake of 1694 left standing only the choir, the high altar with the tomb of Saint Erbert, archbishop and protector of the town, and a few chapels; the rebuilding was paid for by archbishop Gaetano Caracciolo, and after the earthquake of 1732 it had to be done over again, by the will of monsignor Giuseppe Nicolaj. In 1980 it came down altogether. Round about, the lake of Conza is an artificial basin created in the seventies on the Ofanto; on its southern shore, since 1999, there is a protected WWF oasis.