Lettere

There are two stories about the name. The first has it that Lucius Cornelius Sulla, camped on this hill above Stabiae during the Social War, received here the letters in which the Roman senate praised him. The second, more prosaic, links it to lattaro, milk: these are the Lattari mountains, and Cassiodorus and Procopius already said they were made for pasturing sheep and cows.

In the Middle Ages Lettere was the frontier of the Republic of Amalfi towards the bay of Naples: the Amalfitans built the castle here, and between 978 and 979 a diocese was created. Of the old cathedral only a few walls are left, but the twelfth-century bell tower still stands, inlaid with grey tufa and with six rose windows, each different from the others. The castle, enlarged by Normans, Hohenstaufen and Angevins, had fallen into ruin: it was restored between the late nineteen-nineties and the early two-thousands.