Santuario di Santa Maria della Serritella - Volturino

Our Lady holds with her left arm a child who seems to greet us, while her right hand offers us three ears of wheat. The faces are brown, carved in cedar. It is the statue that we find in the Church dedicated to the Nativity of Mary, the only remains of the medieval village of Serritella, a fief of the Knights Templar in the twelfth century, who built a fortified monastery with an adjoining hospice for pilgrims.

In July 1862, General Cialdini commissioned sharpshooters and cavalrymen to raze to the ground Volturino who, he believed conniving with the brigand Pasquale Recchia, called Pasqualillo. Legend has it that, upon arriving at the church of Serritella, the knights took refuge in the cool of the church, where appeared the Madonna who told them not to destroy the village.

The statue of the Virgin, placed in the Chapel in 1718, but of unknown date, is the object of popular devotion and the church is a pilgrimage destination on the first Sunday of May and 8 September on the occasion of the patronal feast.