Patron saint festival In 123 days
Saint Valentine, patron of the town that bears his name
📅 Every year, on 14 February
San Valentino Torio celebrates Saint Valentine on 14 February.
The name arrived long before the saint. The town appears for the first time in a document of 868, kept in the Codex Diplomaticus Cavensis of the abbey of the Santissima Trinità at Cava de' Tirreni, where the place is called Balentino; in the middle of the sixteenth century it became an autonomous università under the name of Castello di Valentino, and only in a deed of 1681 is it found written as San Valentino. The «Torio» is much later: it was sanctioned by royal decree on 22 January 1863, on the proposal of the town council, to distinguish the comune from the Abruzzese town of San Valentino in Abruzzo Citeriore. As for the saint, he arrived in 1936: in that year, thanks to the then bishop of the diocese of Sarno-Cava Pasquale dell'Isola, the town obtained some relics of the patron of lovers, and from that date Saint Valentine has been the patron of the comune that already carried his name.
The oldest thing here is a cemetery. In the south-eastern part of the Campanian plain the first traces of human presence lie between the ninth and the sixth century before Christ, with necropolises of about one thousand four hundred pit tombs attributed to the Sarrastri, who inhabited the Sarno valley; from 421 before Christ the Samnites arrived, and much of the population moved to the new centres of Nuceria, Pompeii and Stabiae. The first feudal lord on record is Bertrando del Balzo, in 1269, whom the Angevin registers name as possessor of the hamlets of San Valentino and Casatori; from 1459 the territory belonged to the Capece Minutolo, who held it until the end of feudal rights. The main church, San Giacomo Maggiore, was built in 1760 to a design drawn two years earlier by the Neapolitan engineer Mario Gioffredi, on the ground of an earlier church of 1511 pulled down by agreement between the local government, the feudal lord and the diocese of Sarno: it was raised far from the built-up area, and its three entrances look west, that is towards the town. Inside is the triptych of Saint James, oil on panel by Andrea Sabatini, of about 1520; in front of it, the stairway of piperno blocks laid in a peacock's tail was built between 1804 and 1813.
The San Valentino Torio guide
🎉 Festivals and feasts in San Valentino Torio 1
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Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
Near San Valentino Torio
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Places to see within 25 km
Outside San Valentino Torio, but an easy day trip away.
Museo storico militare Brigata Catanzaro 📍 Catanzaro · 7.8 km Catanzaro museum of the Catanzaro Brigade: arms, uniforms and relics from Napoleon to the Second World War. Chiesa di Sant'Omobono 📍 Catanzaro · 9.0 km Catanzaro church with Norman-Byzantine features, described as the oldest place of worship in the city. Basilica dell'Immacolata Concezione 📍 Catanzaro · 9.3 km Catanzaro basilica built in 1254, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, patron of the city. Chiesa del Santissimo Rosario 📍 Catanzaro · 9.5 km Fifteenth-century church in Catanzaro, consecrated in 1499, with a Baroque mother-of-pearl altar. Villa Margherita 📍 Catanzaro · 9.7 km Catanzaro's oldest public garden, of 1881, with an archaeological museum, a library and a view over the gulf. Castello normanno-svevo di Nicastro 📍 Lamezia Terme · 16 km Medieval castle on the hill of San Teodoro in Nicastro, with cylindrical towers and a pentagonal keep.