Nicotera

High in the old town of Nicotera, this sacred site began as a Norman church, a single nave flanked by chapels, rebuilt in 1065 after earlier devastations. Tradition places its first cathedral and bishop’s residence on the ruins of a Greek temple to Diana, down in the plain below. The earliest record of a bishopric here dates from the late sixth century, when a prelate was dispatched to settle a clerical quarrel. The church endured Saracen attacks and, by 1304, had been suppressed. It later became the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta when Nicotera was its own diocese; today it is a co-cathedral. In 1996, it was elevated to a diocesan Marian sanctuary. The principal feast falls on 15 August, when a fine wooden statue of the Virgin, commissioned in 1747 and borne by angels on a nineteenth-century base, is carried in procession through the town.

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