HISTORY:
The territory was inhabited in prehistory and in historical times by the Greeks between the 13th and 12th century BC, when it was part of the Metaponto colony, the most important of the 8 regions of Magna Grecia. In Roman times Grottole was a Municipium. After the fall of the Roman empire in 851 the Lombards included the Grottole fiefdom in Salerno dukedom, and at that time the castle was built. It was ruled by many feudal families, among them the Orsini-Del Balzo and Zurlo-Pisciscelli, then from 1547 to 1639 it was under the Sancez De Luna d'Aragona, to pass to the Caracciolo of Melissano, Spinelli of San Giorgio and finally from 1738 to the Sanseverino from Bisignano.
Records of the year 1010 show Grottole as a populous town with 13,000 inhabitants, but plagues and wars reduced the number to a little over 4,000 in 1133 when the town was siged and plundered by Ruggero.
Plagues and a disastrous landslide caused a further decline, and in a Numerazione dei Fuochi of 1493 Grottole was inhabited by about 1300 people, and in 1783 the inhabitants were 2010.
After the explosive demographic growth of the 19th century, there was another drop in the population because of emigration, so that now the inhabitants are about 2,600
