We are in Sante Marie, a characteristic mountain borough surrounded by the beautiful mountains of the Karst mountains.

The mountain borough of Sante Marie, from the classical conformation to medieval oppidum, was on the border line between the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples: it was, for this, land of passage of armies and brigands. At Palazzo Colelli there is the Brigandage Museum, inspired by the story of the Catalan general Josè Borjes, captured just outside the town on 8 December 1861.

The name of the pretty borough, which originally identified a temple dedicated to the Virgin placed on a high place, comes from the Latin altum (castrum) Sanctae Mariae. In the Catalogue of Barons (XII century), the oldest testimony of the existence of the country, this is called High Sante Marie; later it is also mentioned in the Papal Bull of Clement III (1188), with the indication of the seven churches present in its territory.