Starting from Piazza Umberto I, ascending via Grammatico and via Costantino Gatta, known as La Valle, begins the mountain trail, which leads to the castle through the ruins of the ancient Casalini, an abandoned neighborhood corresponding to the medieval expansion of the town. The path, accessible only on foot, skirts the mountain to the east in a narrow gorge, on whose peak stands the ancient fortress.

Tradition holds that it was built by Robert Guiscard after his conquest of Salerno and the Principality in 1076. However, it is likely that its original layout predates the Norman era. In 1230, during the Swabian period of the Kingdom of Sicily, the castle underwent maintenance and expansion works at the behest of Frederick II; in 1246, the same sovereign besieged it to bring the rebellious Baron Sanseverino, whose fiefdom included Sala, to order. Likely repaired and strengthened during the Angevin and Aragonese periods, the castle was destroyed in 1497 by the Aragonese themselves, who finally exiled the rebel Antonello Sanseverino and confiscated his fiefdom. In the ancient fortress—which fell into ruin and was subsequently abandoned throughout the modern era—the church of the Madonna della Consolazione or di Castello was erected: the population gathers there in procession on the Sunday following September 12th and on Easter Monday.

In the Marian shrine, noteworthy is a canvas, an 18th-century remake of an older work depicting the Madonna and Child. To one side of the canvas is an unknown figure in Baroque dress, depicted in the act of praying. Popular tradition identifies it as the Prince of the castle, one of the Sanseverinos, perhaps Ferrante, the last baron of the illustrious family, whose fiefdoms were definitively confiscated in 1550 by the Viceroy Don Pedro de Toledo.