Lauro has 3,608 inhabitants in a wooded valley of Irpinia, closed in by mountains that pass a thousand metres and open only towards the Nola side. The name comes from the Latin laurus, the laurel, which in Roman times covered the whole basin; local tradition has embroidered on it, and tells that Hercules, arriving here after Pompeii and Herculaneum, was welcomed with laurel branches, and that from then on the village stopped calling itself Fregonia.
On 30 April 1799 French troops, who had come up into the Vallo to punish the village for the stand it had taken against the Neapolitan Republic, set fire to the churches and to the palace of the Mastrodattia, where justice was administered: the archive burned with it. Umberto Nobile was born at Lauro, the man who designed the airships with which he reached the North Pole in 1926 and in 1928; in Palazzo Pignatelli the museum devoted to him keeps the log of the Norge, the ship's book with the page recording the arrival at the Pole.
Pizza Napoletana · Caprese
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Next up: Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian, and the Lancellotti Castle, Wednesday 25 August
Nearest airport: Napoli Capodichino, 29 km away
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📅 Every year, on 25 August
Lauro celebrates its patron saints Roch and Sebastian on 25 August, the same day the Lancellotti Castle was inaugurated in 1872, rebuilt by Prince Filippo Lancellotti.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Lauro, but an easy day trip away.
