Church of Santa Maria di Mércuri

The church of Santa Maria di Mércuri, from the 10th century, is the only surviving trace of the vanished early-medieval settlement of Mercourion and of the monasteries and hermitages around it in the Middle Ages, when the territory of Orsomarso was an important centre of Basilian monasticism. It is a simple building, with a single nave and a semicircular apse; along the walls run the masonry benches on which the ancient Greek monks sat. Inside is a plaster statuette of the Madonna that merges the attributes of the Hodegetria and the Crowned Madonna. The same world includes, in the municipal territory, the ruins of the castle of Mercurion, documented from the early 14th century, the church of San Leonardo, formerly Santa Sofia, with the remains of a 10th-century monastery, and the cave of San Michele with the hermitage of San Nilo at Timpone Simara: the map of a Greek and monastic Calabria travelled by saints such as Nilus, Leo Luke and Sabas.