Celle di Bulgheria

The name of this town is a historical document in three words. Celle di Bulgheria was made by two arrivals. The first is that of the proto-Bulgars, who pushed as far as here with their leader Altsek and founded villages at the foot of the mountain that has been called Monte Bulgheria ever since. The second is that of the monks, come from Bulgaria and from Greece, who founded cenobies and cells: around those places the first settlements were born, and probably in one of the villages at the foot of the mountain there arose a laura, that is a place of prayer with its cells. The nucleus that grew around it was called precisely «celle», the cells. Put the two things together and you have the whole name. Of that East a devotion is also left: in the hamlet of Poderia they venerate Saint Sophia, who has a votive sanctuary on the slopes of the mountain.

Monte Bulgheria is a limestone massif and its highest peak reaches 1225 metres. Inside it there is a cave the people call the cave of the Madonna, and the name has two explanations, both good: a legend says the Virgin lived there, and a sculptor carved the image of the Madonna out of a stalagmite. In the town the church of the Madonna della Neve has an eighteenth-century altar made of marbles in vivid colours — white, red, orange, turquoise and dark green — and behind it a half-domed apse with polygonal walls, all decorated with neoclassical stuccoes and friezes. The old centre is full of stone doorways, and not far off stands Palazzo De Luca. The town sits in between, the mountain on one side and the river Mingardo on the other, in the southern Cilento.