What to see · Nocera Inferiore

More places of interest

• Palazzo Fienga

  Palazzo Fienga is a mid-nineteenth-century building at the top of the Parco hill in Nocera Inferiore, set against the Parco castle. In the early nineteenth century the castle site was bought by the De Guidobaldi family of Nereto, barons of Sant'Egidio, who built a first building beside the medieval structures with the aim of not erasing them; in 1850 Baron Francesco De Guidobaldi had a domed chapel dedicated to Our Lady Mater Domini built there.

  What to see

  The present structure was completed in the early twentieth century by the Fienga family, collectors who gathered some three thousand Roman finds and displayed the collection in a whole wing of the palazzo, mentioned in the 1950 Annuario dei Musei e Gallerie d'Italia. The palazzo is on two levels, rectangular in plan.

  Today it houses the offices of the territorial pact of the Agro nocerino-sarnese and, in summer, theatre and music shows. In the conference hall is the Virtual Theatre of the Sarno Valley, with 96 seats, which uses virtual reality to reconstruct the area's main ancient monuments, from the princess's tomb at San Valentino Torio to the theatre of Nuceria Alfaterna and the farm villa at Scafati.

  Visiting

  The Virtual Theatre can be visited by booking; times and events should be checked beforehand.

  Our editors' tip

  Below are two courtyards: the first opens around the medieval tower of the Parco castle, the second is a large parade ground surrounded on four sides by rooms with crenellated fronts.

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