Limatola

The name is thought to come from limata, in Latin limatula, meaning sand or a sandy place; the municipal coat of arms, however, shows an arm gripping a file, and carries a motto worth reading twice: Sua servat qui salva esse vult communia, he saves what is his who wishes the common good to be safe. Limatola is the westernmost comune of its province — almost all its boundary is with comuni of the Caserta area, including the city of Caserta itself — and it lies at the foot of a hill that watches over the course of the Volturno. In 842 the Lombard count Landolf of Caserta won a victory here against the men of Benevento; in 1064 the place belonged to the abbey of Montecassino.

On the top of the hill stands the castle, built by the Normans on the remains of a Lombard tower and turned during the Renaissance from a military work into a lordly residence, though it kept its ring of walls with round towers. The palatine chapel dedicated to San Nicola still has its original door and an old crucifix, and some rooms are frescoed, mostly in the eighteenth century; after decades of neglect the castle was restored in 2010 and now houses a hotel with a restaurant. The village's figures tell another story: there were 126 households in 1532 and 277 by 1561, but after the plague of 1656 only 112 were left.