Rionero in Vulture (Arennìure (in the Rionero dialect) is a municipality in the province of Potenza.
Situated on the slopes of the Mount Vulture, was awarded the Silver Medal for Civil Merit for acts of self-sacrifice during the Second World War.
The town is also known for its abundance of mineral waters, the sector in which the company Fonti del Vulture operates; it bottles, amongst others, Lilia and Sveva waters.
Rionero in Vulture is also home to the CROB, a cancer research centre of national importance.
Region
The village is situated on two hills to the south-east of Mount Vulture (at 676 metres above sea level) on the border between Campania and Puglia. Its inhabitants are spread between the main village and the hamlets of Monticchio Bagni e Monticchio Sgarroni, where they are located two lakes of volcanic origin.
History
Antiquities
The area was already inhabited as early as the 4th century BC, as evidenced by the tombs discovered at the sites known as “San Francesco”, “Cappella del Priore” and “Padulo”.
Traces of a Roman-era aqueduct have been found on the Ripacandida river, near the present-day village. In the 3rd century BC, it became part of the countryside surrounding Venusia (now Venosa).
Near the “Torre degli Embrici”, archaeological excavations carried out in 2004 unearthed an agricultural and spa settlement dating back to the last few centuries BC and which continued until the late Middle Ages.
One bull issued by Pope Eugene III dated 1152 gave rise to “Santa Maria di Rivonigro”, a farmhouse in the Atella estate, which in turn belonged to the Bishop of Rapolla.
The Middle Ages
The fall of the Roman Empire was followed by a succession of barbarian invasions, culminating in the Norman conquest. The population settled mainly in the hamlet of Monticchio, turning the local castle – which probably predated their arrival – into a stronghold.
The area subsequently became a place of refuge for the Basilian monks, who had escaped the iconoclastic persecutions in the Balkans. Consequently, the religious order settled in Monticchio, where it also built an abbey.
In Swabian period, the Rionero area was Frederick II’s hunting lodge who favoured the woods of Mount Vulture for pursuing his great passion, occasionally leaving his beloved Melfi, where he spent most of his free time.
The end of Swabian rule was followed by a dramatic rise in taxes on the hamlet, which further worsened the already rather miserable living conditions of its inhabitants.
In 1316, following a proclamation by John of Anjou granting exemptions and immunities to encourage settlement in the then newly founded town of Atella, Rionero was almost entirely abandoned for about a century.
Modern Age
A devastating and unexpected earthquake that razed Atella to the ground proved to be a stroke of “luck” for Rionero. In 1456, there was a surge in the number of people from Atella settling in the hamlet of Rionero.
During the same period, a farming community of Albanian origin, hailing from Melfi, also settled there. This community grew up near the “Church of the Dead”, where it was able to practise its Greek rite until 1627, when Bishop Diodato Scaglia converted it to the Latin rite.
During the Spanish rule, the city went through a period of peace and prosperity. On 1 April 1502, Rionero hosted Louis d’Armagnac, Duke of Nemours, and Consalvo Fernandez of Cordoba – commanders of the French and Spanish armies respectively – at the church of Sant’Antonio, where they met to draw up agreements on the the partition of the Kingdom of Naples.
Severely affected by the earthquake of 1694, its population at that time did not exceed seven hundred people. Subsequently, the noble Caracciolo family, who held the fiefdom, granted permission for the clearing, tilling and cultivation of the land occupied by the woods in the area known as “Gaudo”.
Thanks to its location on the border between Campania and Puglia, Rionero experienced a degree of economic and demographic growth: by 1735, the population had reached around 3,000, and by 1752, around 9,000. By the end of the 18th century, Rionero was the second most populous town in the whole of Basilicata, with 11,000 inhabitants; Matera ranked first, with 12,300 inhabitants.
During the The Neapolitan Republic of 1799, Rionero played an active part in the motions and the’Tree of Liberty. All this happened simply because, by then, all the neighbouring countries had already become democratic and trade had become virtually impossible.
Michele Granata and Giustino Fortunato the Elder, both from Rionero, were leading figures in the Neapolitan Republic; however, following its fall, Granata was sentenced to death in December of that same year, whilst Fortunato managed to escape. Fortunato was later reinstated by Joachim Murat and, following the Second Bourbon Restoration, became Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
Eighteenth century
By 1811, Rionero’s population had exceeded 11,000 and it was elevated to Autonomous municipality established by decree of Joachim Murat on 4 May of that same year, thanks to the efforts of Giustino Fortunato senior.
In April 1848, at the height of the agrarian revolution under the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the following were recorded in Rionero severe unrest against large-scale landownership. The farmers of Rionero, having forced the mayor to abolish the tax on milled grain, invaded the Lagopesole woodland belonging to the Doria family, but leased as pasture land to the Fortunato family, once again raising the long-standing issue of land allocation, which had already come to the fore on several occasions throughout the history of Southern Italy.
At the dawn of Italian unification, Nicola Mancusi, A priest, patriot and head of the Avigliano insurrectionary committee, seeing strong support from the middle classes, chose Rionero to set up another committee in June 1860, which would have facilitated the so-called the Lucanian uprising in support of Giuseppe Garibaldi.
17 August in the same year, the then mayor by Rionero, Giuseppe Michele Giannattasio, Holding the picture of Garibaldi, he went out into the square shouting “Long live Garibaldi!” and, together with other supporters such as Emanuele Brienza, Canio Musio, Nicola Mennella, Achille D’Andrea, Achille Pierro, Francesco Pennella and Costantino Vitelli, he travelled to Potenza, leading a group of 54 volunteers.
With the the fall of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and his annexation to the new Kingdom of Italy, However, those hopes were dashed and the promises of a resolution on the issue of state-owned property by the new government were not implemented causing widespread discontent amongst the working classes.
So Rionero became one of the main centres of post-unification banditry and was the birthplace of the most famous bandit of the period, Carmine Crocco, known as “Donatello”, a farm labourer who enlisted as a Garibaldian during the Expedition of the Thousand and who, following his disappointment at the lack of leniency shown towards his past as a deserter, joined the Bourbon ranks to fight the bourgeoisie and the Unification Army, eventually becoming commander of an army of 2,000 men.
Over the course of four years, Crocco terrorised the Vulture, Irpinia and Capitanata regions, and his raids extended as far as Molise and Salento.
Another well-known bandit from Rionero was Michele di Gè, who took up banditry when Crocco’s army had been almost entirely crushed. With the end of banditry, Rionero was plunged even further into poverty and destitution.
It was the commitment of the the Southern Italian writer Giustino Fortunato, a native of Rionero, to alleviate the harsh living conditions in the town: with the dthe distribution of anti-malaria vaccines, alongside the construction of a nursery school dedicated to his mother, Antonia Rapolla, and to the railway station of “Rionero-Atella-Ripacandida”, which opened on 21 September 1897.
From the 20th century to the present day
In 1902, the then Prime Minister Giuseppe Zanardelli, whilst travelling to see for himself the problems facing Southern Italy, visited Rionero accompanied by Fortunato and stayed at his palace between 26 and 29 September.
In September 1943, One of the saddest tragedies in Rionero’s history took place there, where Eighteen residents of Rionero were massacred by Nazi troops. As early as the 16th of that month, the population, fearing that the Germans would destroy the food stores, stormed the very same stores in the Sant’Antonio district, carrying off sacks of flour, rice and other foodstuffs.
The Nazis opened fire on the crowd, killing a 17-year-old boy, Antonio Cardillicchio, and set fire to the warehouses, where a woman, Elisa Giordano Carrieri, lost her life.
On 24 September, the farmer Pasquale Sibilia, roused by his daughter’s screams, left the house armed: he thought he had spotted a paratrooper sergeant trying to steal one of his hens. So he fired, wounding his daughter in the process: the other man, in fact, returned fire, grazing him and striking Sibilla in the groin.
This action by the farmer angered the captain of the paratroopers, who, on the orders of a German officer, had sixteen people (including Sibilla) arrested; all were brutally killed by machine-gun fire.
The only survivor was Stefano Di Mattia, who had been presumed dead because he had fainted, but who managed to save himself by using his comrades’ bodies as a shield. A memorial stone erected at the site of the massacre commemorates the tragedy for which the town of Rionero was awarded the Silver Medal for Civil Merit.
On 3 October 2009, he welcomed the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, who was hosted at Palazzo Fortunato during the conference “Southern Italy and National Unity – Towards the 150th Anniversary of the Unification of Italy”, where he discussed the Risorgimento and Southern Italy, whilst paying tribute to the memory of Fortunato.
