Casoria

In the heart of the hinterland north of Naples, Casoria is one of the most densely populated towns in Italy: a farming village turned industrial hub in the twentieth century, it is now living through the transition of the whole metropolitan area. The name appears for the first time in documents of the late tenth century, between 993 and 998, linked to a casa aurea, the golden house of Raviosa. The village grew after the year one thousand around the Benedictine monastery of San Gregorio Armeno, and in 1815 it became the capital of a district of nineteen comuni.

Its territory was a marsh: reclaimed in the nineteenth century, it became one of the most fertile in the region, and until the nineteen-fifties Casoria was a farming centre that made pasta and wine. Then came industry, a great deal of it, and the population quadrupled in forty years. The name is still tied to Saint Ludovico of Casoria, the nineteenth-century friar of hospitality canonised in 2014, and to the churches of the old centre. For travellers it is above all a position: Naples, Capodichino airport, Vesuvius and the Phlegraean coast are all a quarter of an hour away.