The patron saint of Sant'Elia a Pianisi is Saint Elijah the Prophet, celebrated on 20 July; the municipal coat of arms depicts him standing on a wooden chariot, holding a white sash, on a gold field.
The town arose from the merger of two settlements, Sant'Elia and Pianisi, following the destruction of the medieval castle of Pianisi in 1528; already in the late Middle Ages, in the 15th century, a natural disaster had forced the inhabitants of the upper village of Pianisi to move to the lower territory of the abbey, which was then renamed Sant'Elia a Pianisi. The town was a fief of numerous Neapolitan families and, from the early 17th century, of the de Palma Artois family.
In the Capuchin friary of Sant'Elia a Pianisi two figures of sanctity stand out: the Servant of God Padre Raffaele da Sant'Elia a Pianisi, who died on 6 January 1901 and whose cause for beatification is still under way at the Vatican, and Saint Pio of Pietrelcina, who lived there for nearly four years as a young friar, the longest period he spent in any friary after San Giovanni Rotondo: it was precisely at Sant'Elia a Pianisi that he made his perpetual profession, becoming a friar in every respect.
