La Church of Santa Maria del Buon Consiglio stands in the hamlet of Serradarce, on the heights overlooking the Sele valley, and is today the parish church of reference for the entire village. According to the reconstruction carried out by the association Città di Campagna ETS, the original building was commissioned around 1850 the campagnese lawyer Giuseppe Cantalupo, belonging to a noble family that owned vast tracts of land in the area. His intention was to give the inhabitants a stable place of worship, preventing them from having to constantly travel to the city centre to attend Mass.
The first church, completed in 1852, quickly became a spiritual reference point for the communities in the «highlands» of the Campagnese territory. During the 19th century, the building was enriched with new rooms and related social initiatives: the construction of the rectory, the opening of Italian, Latin, music and piano schools, and the foundation of the Brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception contributed to making Serradarce a small religious and cultural centre in constant dialogue with Campagna.
In Twentieth century population growth made a more radical expansion necessary. In 1954, the parish priest bought a piece of land in front of the church with the aim of building a new, larger, more functional church, adapted to contemporary liturgical needs. The 16 October 1959 archbishop Giuseppe Maria Palatucci blessed and symbolically laid the foundation stone of the new building, which was inaugurated in 1963, with some spaces still to be finished, and completed in the 1968 with the consecration of the altar.
The official records of the CEI census and the Catholic Yearbook today describe Santa Maria del Buon Consiglio as a parish church from the 1950s, with a rectangular layout, belonging to the archdiocese of Salerno-Campagna-Acerno and part of the Campagna-Colliano deanery. The current building, the result of this construction phase, is the face with which the parish presents itself to the faithful and visitors who come to Serradarce.
The story of St Mary of the Good Council is inextricably linked to the figure of the’lawyer Giuseppe Cantalupo. It was he, at mid-19th century, to finance and promote the construction of the church in the hamlet where he owned extensive property, with the idea of leaving «to posterity a sacred temple» entrusted to the care of the bishop of the time, Monsignor De Luca. The work responded as much to a devotional intention as to a clear social sensitivity towards the inhabitants of Serradarce.
In 1870 work continued with the building of the vicarage, designed not only as a residence for the priest but also as a space for educational activities. In fact, the lawyer Cantalupo wanted an Italian and Latin school and a music and piano school to be held there, entrusting Brother Mariano with the task of guiding both pastoral life and these educational initiatives.
At the instigation of the friar and the Cantalupo family, the Brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception, officially erected in 1885 by Bishop Nappi. The confraternity played an important role in the’religious and social animation of the hamlet, Among other things, it was responsible for the construction of the bell (1889) and the driveway that more easily connected Serradarce to the church in 1901. Finally, in 1902, the Serradarce Fair, a sign of the economic and community vitality associated with the new religious pole.
A decisive moment occurred in July 1924, when Archbishop Carmine Cesarano, together with the Cantalupo heirs, officially erected the parish church dedicated to Santa Maria del Buon Consiglio. In 1933, the interior of the 19th-century church was decorated by the artist Alfonso Metallo, completing a season in which buildings, confraternities and social initiatives had transformed Serradarce into a community with a strong religious identity of its own.
In post-war period, population growth and changing pastoral needs made it clear that the 19th century church was no longer sufficient. The decision to construct a new building, taken in 1954 with the purchase of the land in front of it, marks the transition to a different architectural season, in line with developments in sacred building in the 20th century.
The new church, designed in the 1950s, is laid out on a rectangular plan and built with a reinforced concrete structure, according to the most common building solutions of the period. The focus is on the interior spacesa large and bright hall, designed to accommodate the entire assembly, with a clearly visible presbytery and functionally distributed ancillary rooms. L’outside, sober and linear, it dialogues with the hillside profile of the hamlet.
The 16 October 1959 the archbishop Giuseppe Maria Palatucci laid the foundation stone of the new building, starting the work that continued for all the following years. In 1963 the church was inaugurated and opened for worship, although some parts were still in an unfinished state; in 1968 The journey ended with the consecration of the altar, which definitively sanctioned the community's move to the new parish seat.
Today, the church of Santa Maria del Buon Consiglio sums up both seasons of its history: the memory of the first foundation 19th century, linked to the Cantalupo family and the confraternity, and the concreteness of the’modern building, the result of the reconstruction of the second half of the 20th century. Visiting Serradarce therefore means encountering a community that continues to recognise itself in this dual heritage, between tradition and renewal.
