Gildone: feasts and traditions

Gildone is a small village of just under 700 people in the province of Campobasso, 608 meters up among hills, fields and woods, a few kilometers south of Molise's regional capital. The origin of its name is uncertain: a 12th-century register calls it Celidonia, and later documents Geldone. The area was already settled by the Samnites, as shown by the remains of a fortification on the "Montagna", the 902-meter hill above the village, and a necropolis of 23 tombs; in Roman times it was a fortified oppidum.

The present village grew up around a Lombard castle, and under Emperor Frederick II it was imperial crown land. For centuries Gildone sat on the routes between Campobasso, Jelsi, Cercemaggiore and Boiano, until the Appulo-Sannitica road was built in the 1840s and traffic moved elsewhere. The mother church of San Sabino, consecrated in 1690, holds a wooden sculpture attributed to Paolo Saverio Di Zinno; the old civic tower now serves as its bell tower.

Gildone is known as the "bakers' village": three bakeries still turn out the local specialties. The year's festivals run from the Bread Festival in June and the procession of the Madonna delle Grazie on 5 August, the most heartfelt of all, to November, when the stone-cut cellars of the old town open their doors for the Giro di San Martino.