Pertosa takes its name from a hole: from the Latin pertusus, pierced, that is from its cave. The first inhabitants lived inside it and only over the centuries moved out; at the end of the ninth century, because of Saracen raids, some of them climbed the hill opposite, to a place called Calitria, from which the ways in could be watched. And the village went back into the cave once more: during the Second World War the whole population took shelter there, and so escaped the bombing.
The Pertosa-Auletta caves are the largest in Campania — about three thousand metres — and to get in you have to cross a small lake formed by the river Negro by boat: they are the only caves in Italy entered this way. Inside, the remains of a pile dwelling lie under the water, and the village museum shows a full-scale reproduction of it; beside it stands a museum given over entirely to soil, the only one in Europe. The rest is the story of a hamlet that wanted to stand on its own: the Benedictines arrived in the eleventh century and brought the olive trees, receiving the hamlet as a gift in 1092; in 1799 the village raised the tree of liberty, but the experiment ended badly and the elected head was beaten up by his own neighbours; emancipation from Caggiano came only in 1829, and from 1830 Pertosa had an administration of its own.
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📅 On 21 March (Saint Benedict) and 14 May (Saint Victor of Caesarea)
On 21 March Pertosa celebrates its patron Saint Benedict of Nursia; 14 May is the turn of Saint Victor of Caesarea, while in August the Caves host the Negro Festival.
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