San Mauro La Bruca takes its name from Saint Maurus the abbot, a disciple of Benedict at Subiaco, to whom a small monastery was dedicated in a district called Santa Maria, a kilometre further south: there stood the first settlement, and from there the people moved to where the village is today. Why they did so is not clear: oral tradition speaks of Saracen destruction, but it has also been suggested that malaria in the low, water-rich ground had something to do with it, and the question remains open. The second part of the name, La Bruca, may be Greek and stays uncertain; it recurs elsewhere in the Cilento, for instance in the headland of Velia, once called Castellammare della Bruca.
From 1200 San Mauro and neighbouring Rodio were possessions of the Knights of Saint John, later of Malta, and it was the order's settled presence that made the two rural cores grow into villages: recent research established this, finding in the national library of Malta a manuscript of 1626 with two loose watercolours of 1660 portraying the two places. Rodio recalls the island of Rhodes, seat of the order, and San Mauro's municipal arms are identical to the knights'. Of the old church, demolished to make room for the parish church, the presbytery with its frescoed dome survives: in 1983, during works to save the fresco, the parish priest found on the outside of the dome the date 1511 marked in the still-fresh lime — until then nothing was known of when it had been built.
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📅 Every year, on 16 September
On 16 September San Mauro la Bruca celebrates Saint Euphemia of Chalcedon; the municipality has two further co-patrons, Saint Maurus on 15 January and Saint Nazarius in the hamlet that bears his name.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside San Mauro la Bruca, but an easy day trip away.
