Monte di Procida

For centuries this promontory went back to being woodland. It was a village of Cuma — one gathers as much from a passage of Dionysius of Halicarnassus — and for that reason it was long called Monte Cumano; then, having entered the territory of the colony of Misenum, it took the name Monte Miseno. When around 850 the Saracens destroyed Misenum, the survivors scattered: some reached the island of Procida, others walked as far as the inland plain, where Frattamaggiore stands today. The mainland was left abandoned and the mountain covered itself with wild vegetation, a nearly impenetrable forest: in the second half of the fifteenth century king Ferdinand I set it aside for the royal hunts. The real repopulation began only in the seventeenth century, and it was the people of Procida who did it: hence the «di Procida» in the name.

The settlers cleared the woods little by little, first sowing wheat, then planting the vines of the montese wine, terracing the slopes and raising rabbits in the characteristic ditches; from the trade in those products the local seafaring was born. As a comune, Monte di Procida has existed since 27 January 1907, when a referendum separated the mainland and the islet of San Martino from the comune of Procida. Between the eighteen-seventies and eighteen-eighties many emigrated to the United States, and some, having gone into the restaurant trade, came back bringing fast food with them: in 1984 the cheese-steak became, here, «la Cistecca». The sweet casatiello, the local version of the Neapolitan one, was recognised by the Region in 2022 as intangible cultural heritage, for the ritual with which it is made.