Caggiano

Caggiano is the second highest comune in the province of Salerno and perches above the Vallo di Diano, facing the range of the Alburni. Of those mountains, which people here call li Culuònn, myth says they are the refuge of the Titans, who fled the Tyrrhenian sea to escape Neptune's anger; and a local legend adds that at every earthquake the Titans move eastwards, that is, towards the village. This is a high-seismic-risk area, and that is the way people found to tell about the shaking. The name, by contrast, is prosaic: Caianus, the estate of some Caius, like Caianello in the province of Caserta.

From up here the roads towards Calabria and Puglia were controlled, the ones taken by pilgrims heading for the Holy Land, and that is why the place was fortified again and again. In Roman times the territory belonged to the ager Volceianus, the country of Volcei, and the Instei family built themselves a monumental tomb in the San Stasio district; between the tenth and the eleventh centuries the Byzantine return left two Greek-rite churches, Santa Caterina and Santa Maria dei Greci; around 1070 the Normans raised the castle on older fortifications, and the village grew around the castle. In the twelfth century the Templars built a mansio in the Sant'Agata district while the Hospitallers ran the hospital of San Giovanni: when the order of the Temple was suppressed in 1312, the Caggiano house passed to them too.