Gesualdo has 3,603 inhabitants on a ridge of central Irpinia, and the name comes to it from a Lombard knight. In 663 the Byzantines of Constans II were besieging Benevento; prince Romualdo sent Gesualdo to Pavia to ask his father for reinforcements, and the man succeeded, but on the way back he fell into an ambush. The emperor offered him his freedom in exchange for a lie to be shouted beneath the walls: he accepted, had himself brought before the city and shouted instead that the reinforcements were coming. They beheaded him, and the head was thrown over the walls.
Above the village stands the castle, which in the sixteenth century was transformed by Carlo Gesualdo, prince of Venosa and one of the greatest Italian madrigalists, who withdrew here after killing his wife Maria d'Avalos and her lover in 1590, and who died here in 1613; his scores were rediscovered only after the middle of the twentieth century. The Irpinia earthquake of 1980 left 9 dead, 40 injured and 605 homeless in this comune alone, and the castle is still under restoration: since 2015 part of it can be visited.
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📅 Every year, on 6 December; the Flight of the Angel on the last Sunday of August, since the 1800s
Gesualdo celebrates Saint Nicholas of Bari on 6 December, in the church dedicated to him. Every last Sunday of August, the Flight of the Angel feast is held, a tradition born between 1833 and 1876.
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 Gesualdo, but an easy day trip away.
