Sturno

Sturno has 3,139 inhabitants in the Ufita valley, between the slopes of Monte Frigento and the river. It is a town born of a separation: it was a scatter of houses belonging to Frigento which were called Quasale here, because they were the farmsteads of the better-off families. They had been asking for autonomy since the late seventeenth century, and it came on 9 April 1809, when the commissioner sent by Joachim Murat, Lucio Pascale, went to find out what these people wanted and reported back to the king, who gave his consent. The people of Frigento did not take it well: it took two years to draw the boundary, because the best land, the flat and fertile part, would go to Sturno.

On its coat of arms the town put a starling — storno — perched on a three-peaked mountain: a play on its own name. And there really are starlings, in the garden of the barons Grella's villa, along with owls, woodpeckers and hoopoes and a sequoia planted near the entrance. The date everyone remembers, though, is another: on the evening of 23 November 1980 the Irpinia earthquake killed five people in Sturno and brought down the church of San Michele Arcangelo, which was of the seventeenth century. The statue of the Archangel, however, was not broken: the church was rebuilt and reopened for worship in 1994, when the restored statue came back to its place.