Rossano is a town and commune in Southern Italy, in the province of Cosenza (Calabria). The city is situated on an eminence two miles from the Gulf of Taranto. The town is known for its marble and alabaster quarries.

The town is the seat of a Catholic archbishop and has a notable cathedral and castle. Two Popes have been born in the town, along with Saint Nilus the Younger.

History

The Rossanesi showed great attachment to the Byzantine Empire, whose local strategos had his seat here. The Saracens failed to conquer it, while in 982 Otto II captured it temporarily from the Byzantines. Its Greek character was preserved long after its conquest by the Normans, as noted by its long retention of the Greek Rite over the Latin Rite. The city in fact maintained notable privileges under the subsequent Hohenstaufen and Angevine dominations, but subsequently decayed after the feudalization in 1417.

Passing to the Sforza, and thus to Sigismund of Poland, it was united in 1558 to the crown of Naples by Philip II of Spain in virtue of a doubtful will by Bona Sforza, queen of Poland in favor of Giovanni Lorenzo Pappacoda. Under Isabella of Naples and Bona, the town had been a centre of literary culture; but under the Spaniards it declined. In 1612, the crown sold the lordship to the Aldobrandini, and in 1637, it passed to the Borghese who retained it until 1806. The city was part of the Neapolitan Republic of 1799, but its conditions did not improve after the Unification of Italy, and much of the population emigrated.

Rossano was the birthplace of Pope John VII and Pope Urban VII. Rossano is also the birthplace of Saint Nilus the Younger, who founded the Abbey of Grottaferrata, and whose life is a valuable source of information about southern Italy in the tenth century.

Main sights

• The Cathedral (11th century, with massive interventions in the 18th–19th centuries) is the main monument of Rossano. It has a nave with two aisles, and three apses. The bell tower and the baptismal font are from the 14th century, while the remaining decorations are from the 17th and 18th centuries. The church is famous for the ancient image of the Madonna acheropita ("Madonna not made by hands"), now located in the Diocesan Museum, probably dating between 580 and the first half of the eighth century. In 1879, the famous Codex Rossanensis was discovered in the sacristy. It is a Greek parchment manuscript of Matthew and Mark, written in silver on purple-stained parchment, and is one of the oldest pictorial Gospels known. Scholars date the codex from the end of the fifth to the eighth or ninth century; it is probably of Alexandrian origin.