Pagani

The name of Pagani has nothing to do with pagans: it comes from the Pagano, a family ennobled in the Norman age, and to that line — several heraldists say, while medievalists doubt it — would belong Ugo dei Pagani, the founder of the Templars. What follows is finer still. The village was called Cortimpiano and was for two centuries the home of the Filangieri; then Frederick II gave Riccardo Filangieri the castle of Nocera as well, and a city was born called Nocera dei Cristiani, Nocera of the Christians. But the hamlet de li Pagani kept growing, and grew so much that from the fifteenth century the city changed its name: Nocera dei Cristiani became Nocera dei Pagani, Nocera of the Pagani. In 1806 Joseph Bonaparte's reform dissolved that old unity, and out of two hamlets — Pagani and Barbazzano — came the comune of today.

Pagani keeps Saint Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori, bishop, doctor of the Church, musician and author of «Tu scendi dalle stelle», who died here in 1787: the basilica where he rests is the one he wanted and conceived himself, entrusting the design to the royal architect Pietro Cimafonte. On the eighth of October 1849 pope Pius IX and the Bourbon sovereigns came here: the pope said mass and gave a gold ring to the saint's relic, and a commemorative column was raised in the square. But the town bursts open in the octave of Easter, when the Madonna delle Galline — one of the most genuine feasts in Campania — fills the streets with tammorre, tofe and popular devotion, doves riding on the carts. In the heart of the Nocera plain, among San Marzano tomatoes and canning works, Pagani is also one of the hubs of fruit and vegetables for the whole south: the cuzzetiello with ragù and the santarosa sfogliatella are born a step away.