Nusco

The town stands exactly on the Apennine watershed: rain falling on one side ends up in the Ofanto and reaches the Adriatic, rain falling on the other runs down into the Calore Irpino and, through the Volturno, reaches the Tyrrhenian. They call it the balcony of Irpinia, because from the ramparts of its ruined castle the eye travels from the Vulture massif to the Terminio, the Partenio, the Taburno, the Matese and the Daunian mountains; it is also the third highest town in the province of Avellino. In the second half of the eleventh century Nusco became a civitas and a bishop's seat: its first bishop was saint Amatus, born here, and the cathedral keeps his bones together with the Chartula Iudicati of September 1093, written in Beneventan Lombard script. The castle sheltered William, the last duke of Apulia, in 1122, and Manfred in 1254.

The strangest of its lords was Nicola de' Giamvilla, known as Nicoluccio. As the king's justiciar he was supposed to collect an extraordinary tax to be spent on putting down the brigands; instead he decided to fight them by using them, and offered shelter in the woods of his fief to a band led by a man of Nusco, Mariotto, who called himself Stella Rossa. Mariotto grew strong enough to cut communications between Puglia and Naples, and the queen had him hanged. The ending shook Nicoluccio so deeply that he withdrew into an Augustinian convent under the name of brother Giancola, after handing the fief to his brother, and died there in 1404. From Nusco, much later, came Ciriaco De Mita, who was prime minister.