PLAIUM MONTIS

The upper part of the historic center of Salerno, called also called "Noba Civitas" from Longobards, is a well protected area and difficult to reach from the hinterland, at the foot of the Bonadies hills, slightly sloping towards the sea, between the Fusandola streams, to the west, and the San Eremita to the east. The area possessed a number of natural characteristics that made it an ideal place: it was isolated, without great pre-existing structures, rich in water, an indispensable feature for self-sufficiency.

The "Plaium Montis" district, with the northern wall of the ancient city at the base and the tower around which the castle will grow at the top, was the prominent part of the triangular shape assumed by the medieval city. Urbanized more by monasteries than by houses, it had inside, with the favor of the many springs in the area of La Palma, in Coriariis in general, in San Martino in particular, the city center of the tanning industry.

In the Middle Ages, the advent of the mendicant orders brings an innovation not so much typological, but ideological: convents no longer arise in isolated places, but in inhabited centers, where welfare and charitable activities are easier, and in particular preaching. . The arrangement on the territory of the new religious buildings takes place within the historical perimeter, within the walls or in any case in the immediate vicinity and, in this case, within an urban area already identified historically.

The first foundations in Plaium Montis took place between the 9th and 10th centuries: San Giorgio (9th century), San Michele (9th-10th century), San Lorenzo (976), San Nicola alla Palma (1060), Santa Maria della Pietà (the church dates from the 10th-11th century), all Benedictine monasteries. Thus the Plaium Montis is configured, over time, as a real conventual citadel where the territorial boundaries are described by the individual monastic insulae, bordering each other: a city of monks on the edge of the city of ordinary men who with the massive of its factories dominates and overlooks the city below.

The monastic complex of S. Nicola della Palma - The foundation of the monastery is the result of the joint will of two eminent personalities of the time, Leo, second abbot of the Benedictine monastery of SS. Trinità di Cava dei Tirreni, and the steward Vivo, an officer in the service of Gisulfo II, the last Lombard prince of Salerno. In S. Nicola, therefore, the spiritual interests of the guide of one of the main abbeys of southern Italy merged with those of an exponent of the Lombard aristocracy. In September 1061, the prince of Salerno Gisulfo II granted the monastic body and the steward a land with a brick house near the door called "de la Palma", together with another land on which a balneum was being built, or a structure fed by running waters intended for washing the body, located in the same area, at one of the sources which, as mentioned, were scattered on the Plaium Montis, or the source known as "aqua que dicitur de Palma", from which the name of the gate derived town and of the same complex of S. Nicola. The two important figures first erected, probably as early as 1061, on that land, the church of San Nicola which was soon joined by the monastic structure. The balneum stood on the site of a Roman baths. Such a procedure was not unusual in the medieval world, on the contrary: the ancient spa complexes did not completely disappear, although they certainly lost their original function and articulation, passing, more often than not, under the control of the monasteries. Consequently, the act of washing took on a religious and moral dimension as it symbolically represented purification from sin before approaching sacred places or liturgical celebrations. But not only that: the use of balneum also had therapeutic purposes. Especially in the Benedictine rule it was strongly recommended that the sick monks go to the baths. Consequently, the balneum of S. Nicola della Palma constitutes a monument of inestimable importance, not only as a peculiar element in daily life within the monastery but also because it represents one of the few and oldest testimonies of such structures in the Middle Ages. The archaeological excavations, carried out together with the restoration and consolidation works of San Nicola della Palma, have made it possible to deepen both the phases preceding the monastic complex and the phases relating to the life of the convent itself. A late antique building that had a large terrace upstream of the current convent and a structure connected to a courtyard area that constituted a spa structure were highlighted and investigated; the latter, characterized by "L-shaped" rooms arranged around the courtyard, finds comparisons with buildings of the late imperial age even in the Eastern Mediterranean area. This spa structure, most likely, was attributable to a late-antique house that must have been located right on the slopes of the Bonadies hill. At a later time, with the end of the Roman age, the baths were most likely abandoned and then resumed and reactivated inside the Convent of San Nicola with the construction of some works that guaranteed the connection with the structure and, in some way, the possibility of their use. Then, when the convent was born and began to operate, its first cells were placed above the warm rooms of the Roman baths and connected to them; in fact, through the terracotta tubules inserted in the vaulted structures that support the floors of the cells, the heating of the cells themselves was guaranteed. From these, on the other hand, the cold part of the baths was reached through a stone staircase. It would therefore seem highly probable that the baths were used as part of a procedure for treating the sick, through the use of steam and the hot-cold contrast, which could alleviate and cure certain ailments. The structure of the balneum works within the convent and constitutes a fundamental part in the first phase; then, from the analysis of the written documentation and the excavation data, we know that the thermal structure continued, at least until about 1200, to be used and to be affected by restoration work, only to be abandoned in the 14th century.