The patron saint of Castel San Vincenzo is Saint Martin, celebrated on 11 November in the church dedicated to him, on Piazza Marconi: originally medieval, it now stands in late Baroque form, with a plastered stone facade, a lintelled portal with a broken pediment and a square bell tower; inside, a large 18th-century wooden choir provides the backdrop for a canvas depicting the Virgin of the Assumption between Saint Martin and Saint Vincent the Martyr.
The village takes its name from the nearby abbey of San Vincenzo al Volturno, according to tradition visited by Charlemagne, although no certain historical evidence of this episode exists: the monastery was in any case at the centre of a bitter clash between Lombard monks loyal to their duke and monks favouring the Franks, resolved precisely by the emperor's intervention, which strengthened the community. In 847 a violent earthquake devastated the abbey, which in 881 was sacked by an Arab-Berber band that had penetrated Campania without meeting resistance. The municipal territory today also holds an artificial lake, built in the late 1950s for hydroelectric purposes, well blended with the surrounding landscape of mountains and woods.
