Mondragone

Buffalo mozzarella has one of its historic capitals here: buffaloes have grazed the Volturno plain for centuries, and to many Campanians the phrase from Mondragone is a mark of trust even before one of origin. The town's name, though, comes from a dragon, and the explanation is simpler than it sounds: the poet Jacopo Sannazaro told how a breath so foul it killed anyone who came near poured out of the caves on Monte Petrino, and the people took it for the breath of a monster. In fact it was the sulphurous fumes of the mineral baths of Sinuessa, the Roman colony that stood right here: excavations have also turned up water cisterns, which fits the theory. Above the town, the ruins of the Rocca Montis Dragonis still watch over the Domitian coast.

Sinuessa, founded in the third century before Christ, was for centuries a holiday resort for wealthy Romans, Cicero and the prefect Tigellinus built villas there, thanks to the mild climate, the curative baths and the Falernian wine, which Virgil called the nectar of the gods and which turns up at Horace's banquets. The town fell to an earthquake in 375, and the survivors took refuge on the fortified hill that would become Mondragone. In 1911, while ploughing a vineyard right in the area of the ancient baths, a farmer chanced upon the Sinuessan Venus, now in the museum at Naples. At the foot of Monte Massico the vineyards of Falerno still grow, and on the table there is still the scrippella, the spiral fried sweet that newlyweds give to relatives before the wedding.