Prignano Cilento

On Easter Monday, in the square, the Opera dei Turchi is played: a child dressed in white plays the angel and really flies, hanging from a pulley that runs along a rope from the bell tower of the mother church to the stage, to carry off the Christian boy the Saracens were holding as a slave.

In the second act Saint Nicholas goes into an inn where the innkeeper feeds his customers the flesh of kidnapped children: the saint makes him uncover the vat, and the children come out alive. The village, meanwhile, has had masters of every kind: in 1564 the fief was bought by the Neapolitan poet Bernardino Rota, and from 1701 it belonged to the marquesses Cardone.