Marzano di Nola

The town hall of Marzano stands ninety metres above sea level, and it is the lowest of all the comuni in the province of Avellino: in a province of mountains, this is the village that lies furthest down. The reason is told by the fourteenth century: the inhabitants of Cicala came down from their hill, drawn by the fertility of the plain, and while some founded new villages such as San Paolo and Livardi, others joined places that already existed — Casamarciano and, precisely, Marzano. People came down here on purpose, in other words, and the village lies at the eastern end of the Campanian plain, north of Vesuvius, crossed by the Regi Lagni, a short way from Nola. It has followed all the fortunes of Nola, so much so that even the hypotheses about its name pass through there: some derive it from Marcianus, prefect of Nola between 84 and 86 after Christ, some from a Pandolfo di Morezano, and some go further back, to the Oscans and their god Mamers — the Mars of the Romans — of whom a temple is recalled on the road that linked Nola to Lauro.

On the arms is the Tower, built between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which was the point of entry to the village. In front of that tower, on 26 April 1799, the people of Marzano stationed themselves with makeshift weapons to await the French expedition sent against their parish priest, don Venanzio della Pietra, who held the pro-Bourbon positions of the bishop of Nola. It went as it had to go: they were put to flight, and the priest, who had set off towards the neighbouring villages in search of help, was killed before he could get there. Local history calls it the massacre of Marzano di Nola. The mother church has been dedicated to Saint Tryphon the martyr since 1308, and before that the patron was Saint Nicholas; it has an octagonal bell tower and keeps a statue of Saint Francis that was found without head or arms, later remade by a local artist, Domenico Castaldo. On 14 December 2014 the bishop of Nola proclaimed Marzano a Marian city, for the village's devotion to the Madonna dell'Abbondanza.