Orsomarso

Orsomarso (Ursumàrzu in Calabrian) is a town of about 1,050 inhabitants in the province of Cosenza, in the hinterland of the Upper Tyrrhenian Cosentino coast, inside the Pollino National Park. The village gives its name to the Orsomarso Mountains, the range that forms the south-western extension of the park, and is home to the Valle del Fiume Argentino nature reserve, where Calabria’s last native roe deer live. The village, which according to tradition grew around the fortress of a commander named Ursus Martius, keeps the traces of Basilian monasticism: caves, hermitages and the 10th-century chapel of Santa Maria di Mércuri.

Geography

The municipal territory is mountainous and rugged, and borders Lungro, Mormanno, Papasidero, San Donato di Ninea, Santa Domenica Talao, Santa Maria del Cedro, Saracena, Scalea and Verbicaro; the hamlets are Bonicose, Buonangelo, Castiglione, Marina di Orsomarso, Molina, Scorpari and Vallementa. The Orsomarso Mountains stretch from the Campotenese plain to the Scalone pass; the peaks include Monte Palanuda (1,632 m), Monte Caramolo (1,827 m), Cozzo del Pellegrino (1,987 m), Monte La Mula (1,935 m) and the Montea (1,825 m), a peak with Dolomite-like walls loved by climbers. On the slopes of the Montea grows the Bosnian pine (pino loricato), which in Italy lives only in the Pollino park and bears witness to an ancient link with the Balkans; the woods and cliffs are home to the wolf, the otter and the golden eagle. From the mountains rises the Argentino, a tributary of the Lao, with remarkably pure waters.

History

Orsomarso probably has Roman origins, not as a village but as a fortress defending the outposts along the Lao plain. Reliable records of the settlement only appear around the year 1000, when the area became an important centre of Basilian monasticism, visited by saints such as Saint Nilus, Saint Leo Luke, Saint Sabas and Saint Fantinus the Younger during the Saracen raids inland. At the confluence of the Argentino and the Porta La Terra a fortress arose, one of whose commanders was Ursus Martius, “Orso Marso”: from him the village that grew around it took its name. The settlement developed in small clusters around monasteries and palazzi. In 1498 the fief was taken from Barnaba Sanseverino, count of Lauria, and sold by King Frederick to Perrotto Bisach, who gave it as a dowry to his daughter Barbara; in 1538 it passed to Count Silvestro Tomacello Ferrante di Alarçon, in 1640 to the Ametrano and in 1668 to Andrea I Brancati of Naples, who lived in the baronial castle beneath the clock tower. The fief was then leased to the duke of Giovene and by him to Nicola Cavalcanti, marquis of Verbicaro. With the end of feudalism Orsomarso took an active part in the struggles of the Risorgimento, after suffering harsh reprisals from the Bourbon commander Necco.

What to see

The chapel of Santa Maria di Mércuri, from the 10th century, is the only trace of the vanished settlement of Mercourion and of the monasteries and hermitages around it: it has a single nave, a semicircular apse and, along the walls, the masonry benches used by the Basilian monks; it holds a plaster statuette of the Madonna combining features of the Hodegetria and the Crowned Madonna. In the village, on the central square, the parish church of San Giovanni Battista was built in the 17th century on the remains of a medieval chapel; it keeps canvases by the local painter Francesco Antonio Collimodio, eight 18th-century altars in polychrome marble, a painted organ and a wooden choir. Just above rise the clock tower, a viewpoint, and the baronial castle. The route is completed by the Byzantine chapel of San Cosimo, the Franciscan convent founded in 1610 on the remains of a Basilian monastery and closed after the 1783 earthquake, the church of San Leonardo, formerly Santa Sofia, with the remains of a 10th-century monastery and a water mill, the ruins of the castle of Mercurion and, at Timpone Simara, the cave of San Michele or of the Angel with the hermitage of San Nilo.

The Argentino valley

The Valle del Fiume Argentino nature reserve, established in 1987, covers 3,980 hectares in the Pollino park and is the starting point for many hiking routes. Its most precious presence is the native roe deer: the last specimens of this species indigenous to the Calabrian mountains, estimated at a few dozen, live in a small area of which the valley is the heart. There are also wild boar, foxes, martens, black squirrels and colonies of birds of prey. The woods alternate Bosnian pine, beech and silver fir, which in the small side valleys descend to 200 metres, with holm oaks, chestnuts, alders and Mediterranean scrub. Places in the reserve include the Tavolara pond, the Ficara waterfall, the Pietra Campanara on the slopes of the Palanuda and the cave of the Madonna di Lourdes, rich in stalactites. You can hike the Argentino gorges, while on the nearby Lao you can go canoeing and rafting; the valley also has a climbing crag.

Patron saint

Orsomarso’s patron saint is San Sebastiano, celebrated on 20 January. The inhabitants are called orsomarsesi.

Getting there

Orsomarso is reached from Scalea, on the coast, along the SP 9-10 provincial road, which climbs the right bank of the Lao river. The reference railway station is Marcellina-Verbicaro-Orsomarso, on the Tyrrhenian line. The region’s nearest airport is Lamezia Terme.