centro storico, di crinale, montano, Brindisi Montagna, Brindisi (denominazione storica, cit. 1812)

At this point, the mountains of Basilicata are less a landscape than a geological shrug, and Brindisi Montagna perches on the ridge as though it has always been there. The medieval borgo unspools along the crest, its stone houses climbing towards the feudal castle that has dominated the skyline since the thirteenth century. That castle was rebuilt in the 1600s, and again after the 1964 earthquake; only a square tower remains of the original structure.

The mother church of San Nicola, built in the fourteenth century, stands on the foundations of a small Byzantine-rite chapel dedicated to the same saint, a quiet reminder that this was once a redoubt of Italo-Greek monks. They came in the tenth and eleventh centuries, following the Lombards who had first fortified the site. The village was destroyed by the earthquake of 1456 and lay deserted until Albanian colonists from the city of Corona resettled it between 1534 and 1536. Other churches, the Madonna delle Grazie, San Vincenzo Ferreri, San Lorenzo Martire, complete the historical fabric, though none so tellingly as the castle tower, which still commands the view.

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