Salento

The village was called Sala di Gioi and in 1811, detaching itself from Gioi, it had become an autonomous comune; but the name went on recalling the old dependence on that larger neighbour of Lombard origin. After the unification of Italy they changed it, and the minutes of a session of the town council explain the reasoning: Sala is kept, since it points to a Lombard identity they were proud of; Gioi is repudiated; and a bond with the Cilento is claimed instead. Sala plus Cilento makes Salento, and that is the name the village has borne since 1863. It has nothing to do with the Salento of Apulia: it is a compound word, decided around a table, with the motives set down in writing.

Real growth began with the Italo-Greek monks, whose lineages arrived between the eighth and the tenth century from the Basilian monastery of Pattano, following the Fiumicello torrent and stopping where the areas are still called San Basilio and Santa Veneranda; the De Marco founded the first quarter around a church of Santa Maria, twinned with the one of the same name at the abbey of Pattano, and the notarial sources of the place begin in 1043. In the eighteenth century the village turned on a new axis, from the baronial palace towards the church of Santa Barbara, along which the tall houses of the well-to-do families lined up. The country around is covered almost only with olive trees, of a variety called salella that takes its name from its place of origin; and next to Sala there had been a Salella, left uninhabited by the plague of 1656. In the square of the town hall a marble slab of the fascist years has survived, recording the sanctions imposed on Italy by the League of Nations for the African campaign. In the kitchen they make foglie e patane, field greens with potatoes, and at Christmas the struffolone, puff pastry covered with icing.