Morra De Sanctis

The mountain Morra stands on is made of permeable stone: the water goes in, runs down until it meets clay, and comes out at the side of the hill. That is why the village has fifty-five springs. The Isca torrent, though, when it flooded cut the comune in two, and until after the war there were neither bridges nor embankments: if there was a wounded man or a dead one to carry up to the village, he was loaded onto an improvised stretcher, the vajàrdu.

The village used to be called Morra Irpino: it took the name of Francesco De Sanctis in 1934, in honour of the critic who was born here. On 23 November 1980 the Irpinia earthquake killed forty-seven people here; the mother church, of the eleventh century, was so badly ruined that the restoration took twenty-four years, and it reopened only in 2004.