Pastorano was born of people going away. Before the year one thousand, as Roman town life was falling apart, the inhabitants of dissolved Cales gathered here along with citizens of ancient Capua who wanted to be far from the turmoil of their own city; the name probably keeps the trace of the shepherding that kept them alive. On the Appian Way, on their own land, the Lanza barons of Capua had the chapel of Sant'Anna built in 1712: on 27 May 1729 pope Benedict XIII stopped there to pray and granted a plenary indulgence to travellers who did the same on the saint's day, as the plaque on the façade still records.
In the country house of those same Lanza, on 20 May 1815, the treaty of Casalanza was signed. Murat had been beaten at Tolentino: there the Austrian and the Neapolitan armies closed the Napoleonic decade, and Francis I of Austria handed the kingdom back to his ally Ferdinand IV of Bourbon. For the Murattians it was signed by Pietro Colletta, plenipotentiary of the commander-in-chief Michele Carascosa; exiled afterwards to Florence, he would be the one to write the History of the Kingdom of Naples, published in 1834 after his death. The village where a kingdom changed hands is known today above all for its buffalo mozzarella dairies and its annurca apples.
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📅 Every year, on the third Sunday of October
Pastorano celebrates Our Lady of Mount Carmel on the third Sunday of October. Since 2005, a fair has been held representing the agricultural sector of Terra di Lavoro.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Pastorano, but an easy day trip away.
