Salerno : Italy
History
Salerno is a very beautiful city situated in the middle of two enchanting coasts, the Amalfi and Cilento coasts. In 194 B.C. it was a Roman colony and was named Salernum. The city made progress and also enriched its culture and its traditions during the occupation of Goths, Byzantines, Langobards and Normans. The Goths were defeated by the Greeks whose domination lasted 15 years (from 553 to 568), up to Langobards invaded almost the whole peninsula. In 786 Arechi II, a Langobard prince, transferred the seat of the Dukedom of Benevento to Salerno, in order to elude Charlemagne’s offensive and to secure himself the control of a strategic area, the centre of coastal and internal communications in Campania. With Arechi II, Salerno grew to great splendour becoming a centre of studies with its famous Medical School. The Langobard prince ordered the city to be fortified; the Castle on the Bonadies mountain had alredy been built with walls and towers so from 839 the new capital was seat of a principality and powerful political centre. On December 13, 1076 the Norman conqueror Robert Guiscard captured Salerno, thus putting the end to the hundreds of years of Langobard dominance. In this period the royal palace (Castel Terracena) and the magnificent cathedral were built and science was boosted as the Salerno Medical School, considered the most ancient medical institution of European West, reached its maximum splendour. With the accession to the throne of the Hohenstaufen dynasty (Swabians), at the end of the 12th century, there was a period of economic revival in the city. Following the advice of Giovanni da Procida (a famous citizen of that time), King Manfred of Sicily, Emperor Frederick II’s son, ordered a dock that still now has his name, to be built.
Moreover he founded Saint Matthew’s Fair, which was the most important in the South of Italy. After the Angevin conquest the city was particularly a work of a famous sculptor, Boboccio da Piperno admired by Queen Consort Margherita of Durazzo who took up her abode in Salerno and was buried in the monumental tomb, which is today in the cathedral. From the 14th century onwards, most of the Salerno province became the territory of the Princes of Sanseverino, powerful feudal lords, who acted as real owners of the Region. They accumulated an enormous political and administrative power and attracted artists and men of letters inside their own princely palace. In the 15th century the city was the scene of battles between the Angevin and the Aragonese royal houses with whom the local lords took sides alternatingly. In the first decades of the 16th century the last descendant of the Sanseverino princes was in conflict with the Spanish Government, causing the ruin of the whole family and the beginning of a long period of decadence for the city. The years 1656, 1688 and 1694 represent sorrowful dates for Salerno: the plague and the earthquake which caused many victims. A slow renewal of the city occurred in the 18th century with the end of the Spanish empire and the construction of many refined houses and churches characterising the main streets of the historical centre. In 1799 Salerno was incorporated into the Parthenopean Republic. During the Napoleonic period, firstly Joseph Bonaparte and then Joachim Murat ascended the Neapolitan throne. The latter decreed the closing of the Salerno Medical School, that had been declining for decades to the level of a theoretical school. In the same period even the religious Orders were suppressed and numerous ecclesiastical properties were confiscated.
