Ventimiglia believes that the today's inhabited area of Mercato has risen where the church of St. Mary of Cilento was before, then said Saint Mary of Martyrs, to memory, according to the legend, of martyrdom of some Christians there. In the site where took place the weekly market of Cilento (forum Saturdays) of the documents angioini, seems that in 1472 had been built the church and the cenobio of St. Mary of the Martyrs by Giovanni de Signo.

By an istrumento of 1478 signalled by Senatore, seems instead that the buildings had been built by Angel Sambato, titular priest of the church of St. Mary of the hermit of S. Mango. In 1444 this priest would have asked to the bishop of Capaccio to want to grant him to retire to life eremitica on the peak of the Stella mountain, where was a church of St. Mary, «antiqllis temporibus sancti marchi ».

The bishop of the time, Masello Mirto, consents to the application, equipped by the consent of the pastor of Cilento Giorgio Cardona, with bead of 4 December 1444. The church of S. The Martyrs' Maria, consecrate by the bishop of Capaccio (1477), was submitted then (bead of Paul V of March 4, 1477) to the carmelitanis, for the activity of the religious Paul de Signo.

The convent « on a vague hill is one of the most beautiful convents for the amenity of the place as for the magnificence of the building and copious of the incomes>>. Is news that some bandits in 1662 had attacked convent removing objects and furnishings of it. After 1799 the carmelitanis didn't succeed in taking back an effectiveness care of the chapel of the Stella, then abandoned when the convent was suppressed in French age with real decree of the 1807. The inhabited area, that was magnified after the assumption to the revenue of the barony, was sold then, with Rocca, Rutino and St. Lawrence (1 May 1555), to magnificent Giovanni Gomez, president of the Chamber of the Summary.

To the death of him (1566) the feuds passed to his child Gaspare from which to Michael Giovanni. In 1567 the inhabited area belonged to Paul Bozzuto and then to others, until it was purchased by Granito marquis.Mazziotti attributes the disappearance of the inhabitants of the village of S. The Martyrs' Maria to the plague of 1656, hypothesis already advanced by Ventimiglia.

Mazziotti quotes an appeal of some universities of the territory (1793), where is sign of the « market without other residences ». However, any news in the censuses, from that of 1489 to the ones of the'600.