Montecalvo Irpino

The town stands at 623 metres above the confluence of the Miscano stream and the river Ufita, and it was called simply Montecalvo until 1862, when the adjective Irpino was added to tell it apart from the many places of the same name. About the name there are three readings: the Latin mons calvus, a rocky mountain without trees; or mons galbus, yellow mountain, from the colour of the tuff or from the broom flowers; or else the Roman gens of the Calvia, which is said to have held property here. In the Miscano valley are the Bolle della Malvizza, little mud volcanoes that sprout in the middle of the fields. The typical product is the bread of Montecalvo, so much so that the comune belongs to the national association of the towns of bread. The first historical notice is in a document of 1096 recalling the sending of some sixty armed men from this area on an expedition to the Holy Land; in 1137 the chronicle of abbot Alessandro Telesino relates that king Roger the Second, at war with the count of Avellino, camped at the foot of the castle. The violent earthquake of 1456, instead, made part of the built-up area sink, and from then on the town spread outside the walls, which were never rebuilt.

The fief passed through many hands — the Potofranco, then the county of Ariano, then the Pignatelli, the Carafa, the Gagliardi and the Pignatelli again until 1806 — but the history that counts for more is the political one. Under the Bourbons Montecalvo was one of the most active centres of the Carboneria in Irpinia, and for the constitutional risings of 1820 and 1821 volunteers left from here to fight the Austrians at Antrodoco under Guglielmo Pepe. In the first decades of the twentieth century socialist ideals spread among intellectuals and farm labourers, and antifascism stayed alive throughout the regime, above all thanks to the pharmacist Pietro Cristino and to the political internees sent here from other regions. In 1944 the local section of the Communist Party was founded, named after Giuseppe Cristino, killed in Spain with the International Brigades; in 1946 the joint list of the Spiga won the first postwar local elections and made the socialist Pietro Cristino mayor. At the referendum of 2 June 1946 Montecalvo Irpino was one of the 14 comuni in the province of Avellino where the Republic won, and the one where the Republic took the highest share.