Sirignano

The fief of Sirignano came to the Caracciolo in 1622 through a marriage, inherited from the Albertini family, and for more than a century it stayed a barony: it became a duchy only in 1754. The last Caracciolo duke was Alfonso, who died in 1867; the title passed to his nephew Carlo Sarriano, who, having no heirs, in turn refused it and left it to his niece Giovanna De Lerma di Castelmezzano. The village itself sits in the Baianese, pressed up against its neighbours: the houses run on without a break towards Baiano to the west and towards Quadrelle and Mugnano del Cardinale to the east.

There is one detail, though, that has made its history hard to write: there are two Sirignano. The other one is in the territory of Nola, and it was a principality of the Caravita family; historians have confused the two for generations, and the confusion grew when the Caravita rebuilt the old Caracciolo castle. It is a textbook case of what happens when two places carry the same name: the documents of one end up in the history of the other, and to separate them you have to look not at the name but at the family that appears in the deeds.