Paduli

Paduli stands on top of a spur between the valley of the Calore Irpino and that of the Tammaro, and its history is the history of a place people pass through. In Roman times, on the boundary with Sant'Arcangelo Trimonte, stood Forum Novum — today Forno Nuovo — on the via Minucia, later the via Traiana, at the tenth mile from Beneventum: there were a public market and a mutatio, the post where horses were changed, named in the Roman itineraries. Who passed this way is best told by the list of guests of the castle: the counts of Ariano, duke Rainulf, king Roger, Tancred, Frederick II, Manfred, Ladislaus, René of Anjou, Francesco Sforza and Alfonso I of Aragon. In 1726 the Cybo sold the fief to the Coscia of Benevento, who on the ruins of that castle built a great palace.

From Paduli comes Mimmo Paladino, born on 18 December 1948, one of the leading figures of the Italian transavanguardia, with works permanently on show in great foreign museums, among them the Metropolitan Museum in New York; the church of the Madonna Addolorata e del Sacro Cuore holds several of his pieces. The mother church has a peculiarity of its own: its entrance opens at the foot of the bell tower. Under the kingdom of the Two Sicilies Paduli was the head of a circondario in the district of Ariano. The station, in the industrial area of Ponte Valentino, was entirely modernised and enlarged between 1990 and 2000 for the doubling of the Caserta to Foggia railway: the freight yard, however, was never brought back into use, and since 2005 the station has been closed to passengers too.