The town took shape in the Byzantine age on the remains of an Oenotrian fortress that the Greeks of Velia had strengthened to control their countryside, and the name it took in 1862 says exactly that: a new Velia. In the thirteenth century it was a fief of the Della Magna, of plainly German origin, and later the capital of the «State of Novi», thirteen hamlets. Its barons went far: Tommaso Marzano was grand admiral of the Kingdom, Antonello Petrucci prime minister to king Ferrante of Aragon, Ettore Pignatelli president of the Kingdom of Sicily in the time of Charles the Fifth. And that, according to the source, is where the trouble lies: the direct involvement of the barons in the affairs of the Kingdom of Naples brought inattention to the town and its people, and so abandonment, depopulation and famine. The village paid for the careers of its lords. In 1614 the State of Novi was sold to Giacomo Zattara, and in 1759 the Zattara built the baronial palace and came to live here; between 1928 and 1946 the comune was instead suppressed and merged with Vallo della Lucania.
Above the village rises Monte Gelbison, and on its summit stands the sanctuary of the Madonna del Monte Sacro, built where an ancient pagan holy place had been: the Oenotrians probably raised a temple there to a divinity of theirs, later identified with Hera, and pilgrims have been climbing up since the fourteenth century. The mountain's name has two rival explanations, and they come from different worlds. Local learned tradition held that the site was known to the Saracens, and derived Gelbison from Arabic, with the meaning of mount of the idol; more recently the word has been traced back to the German Gelbeisen, yellow iron, for the limonite deposits. A legend against a mineral. In the parish church of Santa Maria dei Lombardi, where some of the bishops who in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries chose Novi as their seat are buried, there is a wooden statue of the Madonna del Monte whose robe and mantle are an example of estofado, a gift of the Valencians.
No events match these filters.
📅 Every year, on 6 December and 17 August
Novi Velia celebrates its patron Saint Nicholas on 6 December and 17 August; the municipal territory hosts the Santuario della Madonna del Monte Sacro, atop Monte Gelbison.
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 Novi Velia, but an easy day trip away.
