Nocera Inferiore

Nocera is a town that has split in two twice over. In 1806 the dissolution of Nocera dei Pagani produced five of them — Nocera San Matteo, Nocera Corpo, Pagani, Sant'Egidio del Monte Albino and Corbara — and in 1851 what was left split again into Nocera Inferiore and Nocera Superiore. Before that it was one, very ancient and Etruscan in origin: it minted its own coinage in the Samnite period, it has an alphabet named after it, it has been a bishop's seat since the third century, and Cicero counted it among the chief cities of Campania.

Today it is the historic capital of the Agro nocerino-sarnese, the plain of the San Marzano tomato and of the canning industry that fed Italian emigration around the world. On the hill, the castello del Parco, Swabian and Angevin in memory, looks down on the modern town; the provincial museum in the convent of Sant'Antonio gathers the ancient roots of Nuceria, and the early Christian baptistery of Nocera Superiore completes the archaeological pilgrimage ten minutes away. The comune climbs from the eighteen metres of the plain to the thousand and more of Monte Albino. Of Vesuvius, twenty kilometres off, Nocera lies outside the red zone but inside the yellow one: the prevailing winds have always carried lapilli and ash down here. A practical base between Vesuvius, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast.