Laurino

The name probably comes from a laura, the settlement that grew out of the coming together of numerous Greek monks of Basilian observance who lived as hermits in the many caves of this country. One of those solitaries has a church in the village: Saint Elena Consalvo, virgin and anchorite of Laurino, who lived in the grotto of Pruno. The first mention of the place is of the year 932, as CASTELLUM DE LAURI. And in the twelfth century Laurino was of a different size from today: its people were well over three thousand five hundred, spread between the town and its other settlements — Le Chiane Soprane, Le Chiane Sottane, Fogna and Zadalampe. Those names now belong to other comuni: Le Chiane Soprane is Piaggine, Le Chiane Sottane is Valle dell'Angelo, Fogna is Villa Littorio. The villages around here were born out of Laurino. Today, after the emigration, Laurino does not reach two thousand inhabitants: fewer than half of what it had eight centuries ago.

In the war of the Vespers the troops of Frederick III of Sicily destroyed it. What it has kept is worth going to see: two medieval hump-backed bridges over the Calore, one at the foot of the village and one near the church of Santa Elena; the ruins of the Lombard castle and the ducal palace of the Spinelli; the collegiate church of Santa Maria Maggiore, with the wooden choir of Consulmagno of the fifteen hundreds, the gilded wooden altar in the chapel of the Rosary and the ancona full of statues on the high altar; and the Seggio, which is not a building but a hall open onto the square in front of it, and which is where jurisdiction over the state of Laurino was exercised until 1806. Justice was done in the open, in sight of the square. From 1811 to 1860 Laurino was the chief town of a circondario of its own, and from 1860 to 1927 of a mandamento of its own. Below the village runs the Calore, which rises from a spring on Monte Cervati and carries a particular fauna, the otter included; Laurino used to be called the pearl of the Calore.