centro storico, collinare, religioso, difensivo, Santeramo in Colle, Sancti Erasmi (denominazione storica, 1269), Castrum Sancti Herasmi (denominazione storica, 1374)

On a low hill in the Murgia plateau, the old centre of Santeramo in Colle holds its Norman bones close. The historical record before the 12th century is thin, but a document from 1180 mentions a monastery, a church and a baptistery, presumably where the historic core now stands. By 1269, the Angevin chancellery listed it as the casale of Sancti Erasmi, a small, fortified settlement. It is thought that a curtain wall with towers, a moat, and two gates once enclosed it; one gate faced the road to Matera, the other where Piazza Di Vagno is today. The place was long tied to the feudal lords of Acquaviva, but in 1374 Queen Joanna I granted it autonomy, and it became Castrum Sancti Herasmi. After a sale to a Sienese lord in 1410, the fief passed to the Caracciolo family through marriage in 1468. Later, in the 16th century, the Marchese Ottavio Carafa began a building programme that gave the town its Marchesale Palace. A few medieval churches survive from the 13th to 15th centuries, Sant’Eligio, del Purgatorio, and Sant’Erasmo, now renamed Santa Maria del Carmine, mute witnesses to a layered, feudal past.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.