Contursi Terme

Contursi Terme has 3,337 inhabitants on a hill overlooking the valley of the Sele, where the Tanagro flows into it, and the "Terme" of the name says the water that made it known. Historians argue over its origins: some trace it back to the Ursentini that Pliny writes of, others have it born at the end of the fourth century from the refugees of Saginara, a vanished town that stood on the rise facing the confluence of the two rivers and that Alaric's Goths destroyed. Palazzo Rosapepe, which dominates the square, was built by count Orso in the ninth century.

The fief changed hands more times than one can count: Sanseverino, Origlia, Sanseverino again, Rizzo, Morone, Caracciolo, Bernalli, Pepe, Ludovisi, Parisani. But the page worth remembering is another: between 1940 and 1943 Contursi was one of the comuni of Campania that the fascist authorities designated to take in Jewish refugees under civil internment, and the internees were freed in September 1943, when the Allies arrived. The mother church, brought down by the Irpinia earthquake of 1980, has been rebuilt in the same baroque style and reopened in 2003.