Patron saint festival In 222 days
Saint Macarius the Abbot, patron of Oliveto Citra
📅 Every year, on 24 May
Oliveto Citra celebrates Saint Macarius the Abbot on 24 May.
The name is double and says two different things: Oliveto comes from the Latin olivetum, while Citra refers to the old principality that lay on this side — citra — of the Picentini mountains, as distinct from the Principato Ultra; the adjective was added with the unification of Italy, to tell the town apart from others of the same name. In its territory are the mofette, one of Italy's geosites, caused by the natural degassing of the ground: the largest is the Varchera mofette, which can be seen even from satellite, and those not lying inside a pond look bare and sterile, because very few species can bear those gases. From here a whole civilisation takes its name too: the Oliveto-Cairano culture, the one that went up the Ofanto and founded villages across half of Irpinia, was recognised from the many tombs found in these fields — at Turni, Aia Sophia, Fontana Volpacchio, Piceglia, Cava dell'Arena, Vazze, Isca, Casale — necropolises dated between the eighth and the fourth century before Christ.
The first settlement has been located at Civita; when it was abandoned, its people moved to where the town stands today. The first documents naming Oliveto are of 1114 and speak of the church of Santa Maria de Faris. Under the kingdom of Naples and then of the Two Sicilies the town was a hamlet administered by the comune of Contursi, within the district of Campagna, and it became autonomous only with the unification. Of the feudal past there remains the Guerritore castle, whose building runs from the eleventh century to the sixteenth, while the bell tower with the clock tower is of the twelfth. Among the churches, the Madonna delle Grazie is of 1497 and Santa Maria della Misericordia was built between 1712 and 1775: it has three naves, a dome at the crossing of the transept with the evangelists in relief and, in the central nave, a copy of Titian's Assumption. In the town there is also the Lucanian archaeological museum of the upper Sele valley. The Irpinia earthquake of 1980, finally, forced a radical reshaping of the town.
The Oliveto Citra guide
🎉 Festivals and feasts in Oliveto Citra 1
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Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near Oliveto Citra
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside Oliveto Citra, but an easy day trip away.
chiesa di San Donato 📍 Massimino · 9.3 km The parish church of San Donato in the hamlet of San Vincenzo, baroque, built between 1818 and 1820. monastero di Santo Stefano 📍 Millesimo · 14 km Baroque church and fifteenth-century cloister, Cistercian until 1802, now inside a private castle. castello di Millesimo 📍 Millesimo · 15 km Dismantled in 1553 so the French could not take it, the thirteenth-century keep is open again. Castello di Cairo Montenotte 📍 Cairo Montenotte · 20 km The ruins of the Del Carretto castle above Cairo Montenotte, in the upper Bormida valley. Ferrania Film Museum 📍 Cairo Montenotte · 20 km Six themed rooms in Palazzo Scarampi for the plant that made Ferrania a name in world cinema. castello di Dego 📍 Dego · 24 km Ruins at Cua, above the Val Bormida, and a Napoleonic path that climbs up to them.