Gioia Sannitica has 3,640 inhabitants scattered among seven villages below the Matese, on the ancient boundary between the territories of Allifae and Telesia. It was once called Terra Jani, the land of the god Janus, and on the coat of arms there is an altar between an oak and a cypress with the letters A and J: they are read as «Ara Jani», although recent research proposes Arx Joha instead. Of the temple of Janus, however, no trace has ever been found.
Gioia appears for the first time in the Catalogus Baronum of the twelfth century, taxed for two knights against the single one of nearby Compostella: from that figure it is reckoned to have had a hundred and twenty inhabitants at the time. In 1268, after the defeat of Conradin of Swabia, count Corradello and his grandmother Siffridina, who had urged him to side with him, were taken to Naples, stripped of all their fiefs and sentenced to life imprisonment. On a nearby hill a Norman castle remains, and beside it a village that emptied out between the fourteenth and the fifteenth century.
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📅 Every year, on 29 September
On 29 September Gioia Sannitica celebrates Saint Michael the Archangel in the rock-cut chapel dedicated to him; the municipal territory lies within the Matese National Park.
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 Gioia Sannitica, but an easy day trip away.
