GOLFO DI SALERNO

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...

 To indicate the city as a fortified place, Latin uses three words with similar meanings: "castrum", "castellum", and "oppidum". The term "castrum", with the addition of the term to the name of the place, indicated the camp fortified by the legionaries: these were mostly built in wood, and it is for this reason that today we do not find any trace of them. The entry "oppidum" instead has its original meaning in every space surrounded by walls, and consequently the meaning of a fortified place but also of a city is taken up. The original nucleus of the Roman colony of Salernum was a castrum, a military camp. The Roman castrums were not designed to withstand long sieges, as we are used to seeing in films about medieval castles with catapults, towers, fiery arrows, etc., but they had to prevent enemies militarily "primitive" and militarily backward, armed with a sword, shield and ladder, penetrated inside the military camp. A seri...

 In 268 BC, Romans deported, from the Adriatic coast, 360 thousand Picentini (an ancient Italic people), founding among other things the town of Picentia (now Pontecagnano).  In Hannibal’s military campaigns in Southern Italy, during the Second Punic War (218-202 BC), the Picentini rose up and came over to the Carthaginian. For this reason, at the end of the conflict, the Romans forced them to live scattered on the territory. The city was violently destroyed during the Social War (90-89 BC) and there was the consequent dispersion of the inhabitants in smaller suburban villages.

 The civil system, distinct between the Order and the People (Ordo Populusque) provided that the administration of the peculiar public and the care of public affairs remained with the citizens and the nobles, and that the offices remained divided between the nobility and the people. The certainly functional buildings of Roman propaganda are those intended for public events, and in particular the theaters and amphitheaters. Unfortunately, no monumental remains of the time have come down to us, because the Roman remains lie at a considerable depth compared to today's city, buried by catastrophic floods such as that of the 4th / 5th century AD. Salerno at the time of the Empire already had a reputation as a holiday city. Quinto Orazio Flacco, in the 15th epistle published in 20 BC, having an eye disease, perhaps ophthalmia, decides to go on vacation to the sea and wants to escape from too well-known places such as Baia. He then turns to his friend Numonio Vala and asks him: "What...

Salernum has grown on itself in a continuous overlapping of the levels of attendance. This succession, commonly referred to as "palinsesto", it has not spared any of the buildings of the historical center, under which lies the whole  old Roman settlement. Anyway the first documented Roman presence in the area was not a city but a Castrum, a stable encampment fortified by legionaries. The position of this stable was probably in Plaium Montis. Salernum as oppidum is, for the first time, remembered with certainty in the year 197 BC when (with the lex Atinia de coloniis quinque deducendis), Rome decided to found five civium colonies on the coasts of Campania and the neighboring Lucania Tyrrhenian ones, including a brand new close the Castrum Salerni. So in the first years of life of the "Castrum quo in loco nunc oppidum est", the new Roman trade colony (made by simple citizens) and the ancient military castrum had to coexist, since the latter probably performed the task...

 

Due to its location and the confluence of some important roads of Roman origin, as well as the discovery of archaeological finds, scholars believe that it was the forum of the Roman colony, the political and commercial center of the city.