Casalnuovo di Napoli

The name is literal: in 1484 Ferdinand of Aragon granted a private man the ruins of Archora, one of the villages from which Afragola had grown, and on those ruins a new settlement rose — a casale nuovo, a new hamlet. The land was marsh, and it was the Bourbon drainage works that made it habitable: even today some parts of it lie thirteen metres below sea level. In 1929 the comune swallowed a whole comune, Licignano di Napoli, which by its statute is not a hamlet but an integral part of the town itself.

If an Italian wedding dress has ever moved you, there is a fair chance it passed through here: Casalnuovo is one of Italy's centres for formal wear, with dozens of ateliers and tailoring workshops dressing weddings across half of Europe. The speciality grew out of the skill of Neapolitan tailors and became the town's identity. The place itself grew along the road to Apulia, around Palazzo Lancellotti and the parish church of Santa Maria dell'Arco, and its coat of arms carries a Roman aqueduct of seven arches beside a plough: the past of water and farmland that came before the tailors. Naples is fifteen minutes away by train: a practical base at provincial prices.