Battipaglia

Battipaglia was born to take in earthquake survivors: in 1858 Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies founded an agricultural colony here for the families who had lived through the earthquake that devastated Basilicata the year before, in 1857. Until then there were only three scattered hamlets and a plain to be drained; the comune became independent only in 1929, splitting off from Eboli and Montecorvino Rovella. Even the name tells you the work done here: it is an imperative, beat the straw, from the threshing of grain.

The plain, on the other hand, is very old: the Sele plain, a step away from what the Greeks called Poseidonia, today Paestum. On it graze the buffalo that give one of the most celebrated mozzarellas in Campania — the dairies can be visited, and a bocconcino fresh from the curd is an experience of its own — but the plain is also one of Italy's kitchen gardens: artichokes, tomatoes, fruit, and the bagged salads that leave here for half of Europe. During the war Allied bombing razed almost everything, with more than a hundred civilian dead, and the town was rebuilt fast. The little medieval castle looks down on this farming and industrial hub of the Salerno area; the Amalfi Coast and the Cilento are half an hour away.