Town in the province of Potenza, which today is the administrative headquarters of the Pollino National Park. Rotonda is perched on a hill on the South-Eastern part of the Valley of the Mercure. For several historians the city stands on the site of Nerulum, an important Roman road junction. It was mentioned for the first time in a parchment of 1083 and in which there is a full explanation of the origins of its name. This document attests that the name Rotonda derives from the unique urban layout, a series of houses built in a circular defensive way around a castle. Over the centuries the lands submitted the Norman, Lombard, Angevin, Aragonese and Borboni domain.
Not to miss:
- the ruins of the Castle, built in the XV century by the Sanseverino;
- the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation, located at about 1 km from the town center. The building was started in 1558 and completed a few years later to thank the Virgin for bringing to an end a long period of epidemics that had seriously reduced the population. It features a bell shaped dome, an imposing façade in limestone and a fine doorway flanked by Tuscan columns;
- the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, built in 1810 by the local craftsmen and people of good will. Inside it preserves a series of fine art masterpieces;
- the Church entitled to the Holy Rosary, the oldest in the area, which features a trapezoidal plan and a holy water font realized by local stonemasons;
- St. Anthony's Church, dating from the XVIII century, with its beautiful stone portal, a masterpiece of the local stonemasons;
- the noble residenes (Palazzo Amato, Palazzo De Cataldo, Palazzo dei Tedeschi, Palazzo di Sanso);
- the Nature Museum of Pollino, a permanent exhibition of fossils found in the basin of the valley of the river Mercure including the remains of a "Elephas antiquus italicus (an elefant of the Middle-Upper Pleistocene period) and a" Hippopotamus amphibius (an hippopotamus of lower-middle Pleistocene period)