Pizzo

Pizzo is a characteristic town of about 9000 inhabitants, a place popular resort for its beaches,
rich rocky creeks, for its clear sea, its picturesque Old Town, with houses from the sun-kissed,
and the characteristic square with its facing like the prow of a ship, lying like a waterfall
on a steep cliff overlooking the sea.

Monuments

Anjou-Aragon Castle

Known as Castle " Murat " Here he was imprisoned and only after five days October 13, 1815 was shot Joachim Murat , King of Naples , brother in law of Napoleon Bonaparte . Inside there is now the provincial museum Murat .

Cathedral of St. George

As reported by the inscription on the lintel , the Mother Church of Pizzo is dedicated to St. George the Martyr and the Virgin Mary . In the midst of the old town , the structure was built in the second Cinquecento . the Church of St. George has a rich baroque facade carved from Fontana where the saint is represented on horseback in the act of piercing the dragon with his spear . In the basement , in one of the mass graves of the nave , he was buried the King Joachim Murat .

Chiesa di Piedigrotta

It was 1600 and a sailing ship , after a violent storm, was shipwrecked on an isolated beach in Pizzo . The sailors made ​​a vow to St. Mary of Piedigrotta , whose picture was on the ship, to build a chapel at the point where they touched down in the event of salvation.
The ship , while struggling against the fury of the sea , was thrown against the rock and fell apart ; one thing had gone to lean intact on the beach : the picture of the Madonna . The sailors , living up to the promise made in the rock dug a hole and there deposited the sacred image vowing to return and erect , as promised , a votive chapel .
Local fishermen , fearing that the place was too exposed to storms , withdrew the picture and deposited him in a nearby cave , also by building a small altar . One morning , however, after a violent night storm, the painting was not found in its place : the sea had invaded the cave and took away the sacred image was found a few days later at the same place where it was first found . The fishermen decided , therefore , to dig into the rock , where it touched the ground the first time , a cave with a small altar where was placed the picture of the Madonna . Unique in the world of its kind , after more than two centuries , an artist from Pizzo , Angelo Barone, worked for years in the cave , carving into the tuff hundreds of statues .