Casaletto Spartano

In 1810 the French general Charles Antoine Manhès, charged by Joachim Murat with solving the problem of pro-Bourbon brigandage, reached the gulf of Policastro and sent orders to the mayor of Casaletto to make ready fodder and provisions for his army. The mayor did not comply — by choice or because he had not the means — and Manhès, coming up to the village and suspecting him of being in league with the brigands, had him shot at the place they still call the stones of the Campo. Then he ordered the reunification of the comuni of Casaletto and Battaglia, made the mayor of Battaglia move here and turned Casaletto into the chief town. The two settlements are still divided by the Rio di Casaletto and joined by footpaths.

The name, instead, is made of two pieces. Casaletto comes from casale, and in the Middle Ages Casalecti was, together with Bactalearum, a hamlet of the lands of Tortorella; in 1562 the two were sold by Trojano Spinelli to baron Giovanni Antonio Gallotti and detached from the original fief. Spartano was added only after the unification of Italy, and comes from sparto, the Mediterranean plant that grows here almost everywhere — although a local legend traces it to the quarter of Spartoso, the old nucleus that the inhabitants are said to have abandoned because of an invasion of ants. More likely they stopped at the foot of Monte Difesa because there was water: springs and a small river. A tablet with a Latin inscription, at the entrance of the left aisle of the mother church of San Nicola, records the consecration of the church and bears the date 1177. In 1656 the plague cut the population to less than half. The finest place is the Capello, where the waterfall of the Maidenhair takes its name from the fern that grows there, and where an old work called the Sorgitore diverts part of the water to turn the mill.