Pollica

Pollica lies on the southern slopes of Monte Stella, between punta Licosa and the mouth of the Alento, and the original settlement is not where the village stands today: it was on a hill a little to the north, the Serra di Molino a Vento, and it was abandoned. The place first appears in 1113, when a Sanseverino donated property to the abbot of Cava; the abbey held it until 1410. Then came the Capano, princes of Pollica, whose line died out without heirs in 1795. Their castle, twelfth-century in origin but given its present shape in 1610, was bought by the municipality in 1997: the village bought back its own castle.

On the coast the municipality has two seaside hamlets, Acciaroli, on a rocky promontory, and Pioppi, which has a place in the history of science: it was there that the American physiologist Ancel Keys carried out the studies that defined the Mediterranean diet. In the main village the Franciscan convent of 1611 holds canvases by Nicola Malinconico, an eighteenth-century wooden choir, and a statue of the Madonna delle Grazie set in a niche framed by polychrome stucco drapery by Pietro Sernicola.