Torrecuso

Torrecuso has 3,439 inhabitants on the flank of Monte Caruso, inside the Taburno park, and it was born as a castle: the Lombards put it up to keep watch over Benevento, the capital of their duchy. The name comes from torus, the height, by way of Torricolus and Torlicoso; the fortress had a triangular plan and three towers, and three towers are still the coat of arms of the comune today, even though at the end of the eighteenth century the Cito marquises had it turned into a Vanvitellian palace.

The old centre grew only in order to defend itself, and an urbanist who studied it says so without mincing words: oval lanes, ramps, arches, little stone houses with open staircases, and no monuments of any kind. Down below, on the Calore, is the Finocchio bridge, Roman in its oldest structure, medieval in the one above and modern in the last; over it hangs a rock under which, tradition says, the body of Manfred of Swabia was buried for a while after the battle of Benevento in 1266. Today wine is made here: 23 cellars, Aglianico and Falanghina.