San Martino Valle Caudina

In the ninth century the bishop of Telesia, Palerius, and his deacon Equitius fled the city besieged and ruined by the Saracens to take shelter in the Irpinian mountains. Here they were venerated, then forgotten: their relics came back to light only on 17 December 1163, found by a certain Maraldo, perhaps a notary, and today they lie in the church of San Giovanni Battista. Above the old town stands the castle, Norman in plan, which the della Leonessa family bought on 19 January 1343: according to the municipality's old coat of arms, Giovanni della Leonessa paid queen Sancia 800 ounces for it. It still belongs to his descendants, the Pignatelli della Leonessa.

Before them the fief had belonged to Marino da Eboli, a trusted man of Frederick II, who in 1253 took part in a conspiracy against Manfred: found out, he was imprisoned in Castel del Monte and blinded along with his son. Much later the town gave two members of parliament and a novelist, all from the Del Balzo family. Francesco was made mayor in 1860 by Francesco De Sanctis; thirteen years later Girolamo Beltramo won the election for the Avellino seat by beating De Sanctis himself. Carlo del Balzo, a novelist and friend of Verga and Matilde Serao, put together fifteen volumes of poems by a thousand authors about Dante.