Send Gift Baskets to Lamezia Terme, Italy

On 4 January 1968, Lamezia Terme officially became a municipality. Nicastro, Sambiase, and Sant’Eufemia Lamezia are among its former cities.

During the Byzantine Empire, Nicastro’s origins date back to the 9th century, when a fortress called Neo Castrum (“New Castle”) was built. In 1062, Robert Guiscard, a Norman count, founded St. Eufemia, a great Benedictine abbey. For a long time, it belonged to the Caracciolo family and, later, to the D’Aquinos. There were over 100 people who died in a 1638 earthquake that nearly destroyed the city, and the abbey was left in ruins. A Norman castle built by Emperor Frederick II and enlarged by the Angevine kings collapsed. The 18th century was marked by floods and further earthquakes.

Sericulture was a widespread and prosperous activity in Nicastro and its surroundings until the 18th century, so much that five thousand pounds of raw silk were produced yearly. It is reported by the historian Giuseppe Maria Galanti that sericulture and the cultivation of mulberry trees for the breeding of silkworms were still practiced at the end of the 18th century, but the production was in decline.

A total of 8,000 citizens emigrated from Nicastro during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as after the Second World War.