Flumeri

Flumeri has 3,045 inhabitants in Irpinia, on a hill covered with olive groves at 638 metres, between the heights of the Baronia and the Ufita valley. There is no certainty about the name: in the late Middle Ages the town was Fórmari or Flùmari, and some link it to the surname of a Norman family, the Forma, and others to the Latin flumen, for the rivers that close the territory to the north and to the south. Down in the plain, where the Appian Way crossed the road that led to Aequum Tuticum, the remains of a Roman settlement survive, and nearby still stands the Aragonese customs house.

The thing Flumeri is known for, however, is built again from scratch every year. It is the Giglio: an obelisk some thirty metres tall made of wheat and straw, which the town raises in honour of San Rocco. Everyone works on it: the cart-makers put up the structure, the women gather the ears and wet them to plait them, the young people prepare the panels, which change every year because wheat cannot be kept. The Giglio is built lying on the ground and raised in a single day, in early August, with ladders and pitchforks; on 15 August it is dragged through the streets of the town with a tractor and ropes, and at the end they announce which of the teams has won the palio, run since 1991.