Castrovillari is an important and suggestive city built on layers of Pollino. Its residential part is shared into two: the “Civita”, the ancient part with its historical monuments, located on the top of a rock spur; while the modern part is situated on a large valley at the feet of Pollino. The city was created during the Medieval Age, and immediately became, due to both its strategic position and efficient links between the coast and the land, one of the most important economical and strategic centres of these places.

From the highest part of the city we can admire a breathtaking landscape. In the city centre you can find one of the most beautiful monuments, the Castello Aragonese which dominates, with its majesty, the valley below it.

ThThe most ancient testimonies of the land in Castrovillari go back to the Old Stone Age (150,000 – 50,000 years ago). Several of the handmade lithic object found in Contrada Celimarro belong to this Age. Some traces of the Old Stone Age have also been found around Pollino: they prove, as the manufactured products mentioned above, the presence of men, mainly hunters. The Neolithic Period (VI- III Millennium b.C.) left its traces on the hill of Santa Maria del Castello: the Civita, centre historically more ancient, in which we can find axes in rubbed up rock. Fictile finds let us discover a series of caves, meaning that men became sedentary, becoming farmers and cattlemen. The first Neolithical setting it is proven by the finding of a village during the Bronze Age (around 1600 b.C.). The presence of natives is witnessed by funeral finding in Bello Luco and goes back to 800-700 b.C.; while Sibari, in the East coast on the Ionio Sea, was created and became part of this great political and economical colony around 720-721 b.C.. Into the past, in the acropolis which would be subsequently called Castrovillari, where today lays the Madonna’s sanctuary, there was a votive progeny, witnessed by the discoveries, over time, of fictile statues and earthenware, symbols of veneration of feminine Greek gods. After Sibari was destroyed by hand of population from Crotone (510 b.C.), other populations, the Lucani and Brettii, left signs of their culture: we should attribute to the formers a fictile antefix and a bronze representing Hercules, both of them datable in the V Century b.C. Vascular dowry datable to the Hellenic Age (IV-III Century b.C.) comes both from the centre and from its territory. Several archaeological finding (necropolis, “villa”, “mitreo”, and other objects) have been found in the countryside, datable from the Hellenic-Romanic Age till the end of the oldness, as it is the case for the necropolis in the hill of Cimarro (VI-VI Century a.D.), with mainly bronze and china dowries. Various “ville rustiche” discovered, and in paticular villa di Camerelle in opus incertum, witness the strong presence of the Roman Empire in these places. During the Middle Ages, life is concentrated on the hill of S. Maria del Castello, where as the first time the Norman beset the fortified city and get it (1064). Some objects here found testify some depict plastering in Arabic-Norman art (XII Century) found in the sanctuary, pieces of polychrome ceramics revealing the dominance first and the settlement then of different populations: Byzantines, Normans and Sweden, Angevin and Aragonese. We also can find traces of the Longobardic language in the local dialects. At the end of the Norman dominance, with the Sweden time, the medieval centre welcome an Hebraic colony, who built its synagogue and gave the name to the Giudeca (=literally “Judean”), extending at the valleys of hill Lauro. Unfortunately, but some archive source, we do not have any find of the Hebrew colony which laid here for three Centuries. At the top of the hill the Franciscan majestic convent it’s the result of the enlargements due to the creation of the first factory in 1220-1221, when Pietro Catin was sent to Calabria by S. Francesco d’Assisi to spread the new rule. The great castle with quadrilateral floor plan, located in the Northen part of the medieval inner city in correspondence to porta della Catena, was completed in 1490 by the Aragonese succeeded to the Angevin after a very large battle; then the castle was keyed to the utilization of fire-arms. The scratch on the main door recalls that king Ferdinando I d’Aragona made it build ad continendo in fide cives, “to restrain citizens”: this was done in response to the threat of revolts - whose famous is that “of barins” (1485) – plotted by the tenacious pro-Angevin party, which agitated the Reign of Naples during the second half of the XV Century (Francesco di Vasto).