Fontanarosa has 3,301 inhabitants on a hill of Irpinia, and it is born from a destroyed city: Aeclanum, which stood on the Appian Way, was taken and razed in 662 by the Byzantine emperor Constans II, and the survivors scattered into the surrounding country founding several villages, this one among them. That this is how it went is told by the inscriptions from Aeclanum found in this territory. About the name, on the other hand, there are four theories: the healthiness of the climate, a spring with the flavour of roses, the Latin fontanarosarum — a place rich in springs — or, quite simply, the fountain of a certain Rosa where everybody went to draw water.
The village at first was called Rosa, and in 987 a terrible earthquake destroyed it, killing almost all its inhabitants, along with Ariano and Frigento; it was the Normans who put it back on its feet. In the sanctuary a terracotta statue of the Madonna is venerated, of Byzantine workmanship, which came from the East when sacred images were being destroyed there: to save it from the iconoclasts the people of Fontanarosa hid it in an underground chamber, at the bottom of a well, and there it stayed forgotten until the fourteenth century. The Irpinia earthquake of 1980 left 4 dead and 352 homeless here.
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📅 Every year, on 6 December; the Straw Cart for the Madonna della Misericordia
Fontanarosa celebrates Saint Nicholas on 6 December. The town also holds the Festa del Carro di Paglia, a 28-metre straw obelisk pulled by two pairs of oxen in honor of the Madonna della Misericordia.
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 Fontanarosa, but an easy day trip away.
