Rocca d'Evandro

Rocca d'Evandro has 3,366 inhabitants on a hill at the foot of Monte Camino, with the fortress at the top looking out over the whole valley of the Garigliano. Before the eleventh century the place was called Vandra, and the settlement lay lower down: it may have been born there in 582, when the people of Casinum and Aquinum fled before the raids of the Lombard Zotto. Of the Roman period what remains is above all one unusual thing: at Mortola the remains of a landing place for wine came to light, on the river.

The castle has been there since the tenth century, and the document that first names it is of 11 July 961: the princes of Capua and Benevento were ceding it to a monastery. In the sixteenth century it belonged to Ettore Fieramosca, and in 1534 Charles V, having conquered the Kingdom of Naples, made a present of it to the poet Vittoria Colonna. Since 1980 the castle has belonged to the comune, which bought it to save it. And here is something few people know: Rocca d'Evandro was part of the territorial abbey of Montecassino until 2014.