San Sostene

San Sostene is only 10 kilometers from the Marina consisting of all curves and hairpin bends that make the route particularly long and tiring. The mountains are even closer here with their beautiful contrasts and colors in the valley of the Alaco River, tributary of Lacina Lake, in the heart of the Serre Park. There are, unfortunately, few remnants of its more remote architectural remains, such as the Norman castle.
The Mother Church, located on a hillock overlooking the town, is connected to the square by a striking staircase made of granite, along with the elegant portal, in 1759 by Serbian masters. The interior of Santa Maria del Monte is elegantly decorated in late Baroque forms although the proportions appear somewhat syncopated due to the absence of a clerestory. The large central space of the vault was frescoed in 1805 by Giovanni Spadea, a painter from Catanzaro, who depicted there the Virgin Mary of the Mount between Saints Rocco and Sosthenes. It is plausible that the work was made almost as a votive offering after the 1783 earthquake. On the apse wall, behind the 1840 high altar, is enclosed in a later frame the pictorial altarpiece with Our Lady of the Mount, St. Sosthenes and St. John the Baptist, signed by Borgia painter Francesco Basile in 1787. Several wooden statues are preserved among which those of the Protectors, St. Roch and St. Sosthenes, carved in Naples by master Nicola Del Vecchio and dated 1817, deserve special mention. Both images are the protagonists of the striking feast celebrated on August 16: the faithful, very often barefoot, reach the Mother Church where they wear a mozzetta as a sign of penitence and entrustment to the patron saints. They tie to a stick the anthropomorphic wax ex voto depicting the body part for which they asked for mercy. Along with the object are often offerings that are left in the church at the end of the ritual. The long procession through the streets of the village begins, whose meager yet striking dimensions dictate the carrying of the two statues on the shoulders. Arriving at the lower part of the village where the road is driveway, St. Sosthenes and St. Rochus are laid on a wagon engulfed in wreaths pulled by a pair of oxen for another shorter ride but with a strong symbolic value obviously linked to the land and peasant traditions.