Monumental complex of San Vitaliano

IT

Caserta

One name for three cities

From the magnificent hamlet of the oldest city, the original Casa Hirta, secure in the hills for seven centuries, before becoming Caserta Vecchia, supplanted in its main functions and abandoned by the vast majority of the inhabitants in favour of the new Caserta, corresponding to the current capital, developed in the plain below.

CASERTA
CASA HIRTA

The new Caserta on the plain around the Lombard tower

The large and fertile plain crossed by the Volturno had been chosen several times, already in antiquity. By the Oscans and Etruscans, founders of the city of Calatia as early as the 8th century, and then by the Samnites to whom the 5th-century tombs found a few decades ago under the Royal Palace belong...

01.

HAMLETS

Sites of ancient settlements continue to welcome strongly rooted communities that perpetuate their identity, preserving picturesque settlements marked by time, customs and traditions, historical and cultural memory.

02.

CASTLES

Traces of dismantled walls or still mighty stone monuments, guarding roads, feuds, businesses and civilizations, castles stand on the heights with their severe charm, millenary witnesses of the passing of time.

03.

MUSEUMS

In the territory inhabited since the dawn of history, every era has left traces and finds saved and handed down for the benefit of contemporaries by the numerous museums of cities and towns, small and large caskets of civilization. Unmissable.

04.

SANCTUARIES

On the mountains, in places that are not easy to access but certainly have a suggestive landscape, over time the collective faith has created sanctuaries and places of prayer, with historical testimonies and often surprising works of art

05.

ROYAL DELIGHTS

Beyond the Royal Palace, the other residences of the Bourbon sovereigns in the favorite places for their royal leisures, centers of excellence for agricultural production, selected farms, factories and avant-garde manufactures for their time, experiments of new social life.

06.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES

Theaters and amphitheaters, roads and sacred and civil buildings, well preserved and present in the cities of ancient settlements, tell the importance of Campania felix at the time of ancient Rome, when Capua was second only to the Urbe

07.

TRAILS

Itineraries with an ancestral charm, following paths beaten since ancient times and advancing into places of still uncontaminated nature, where the meeting of nature and culture creates unique landscapes of rare beauty.

08.

REGGIA

The largest palace in the world, a masterpiece with a thousand surprises by Luigi Vanvitelli, it extends across the great plain with all the sumptuousness of its buildings, the immense park with its attractions and the kilometre-long waterway.

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Caserta

At that time it was known as Miliarum. An area of Campania Felix at the foot of Casa Hirta, in the plain, where the bishop Vitaliano of Capua chose to take refuge as a hermit in the 8th century.

There, in the district of Casola of the actual Caserta, an hermitage arose, which soon became a reference for numerous miracles attributed to the religious, already in the odor of sanctity. It was the future Saint who built the complex which would take his name. A narrow space, delimited by stone walls, still reachable today through a path along which you can see various chapels dedicated to the founder.
The church is a central and fundamental element, with a rectangular plan, made up of a large presbytery and a choir where, in a niche in the wall, a statue of the Saint is placed. Inside the sacred building, there is a small chapel whose stucco altar is surmounted by an image of the Madonna of the Rosary. Outside, there is a portico with three arches of which the central one leads into the entrance of the church, while the two side ones lead to the monks’ cells. A bell tower completes the structure, and participates in the overall aesthetic harmony of the hermitage.
Mentioned for the first time in a seal of 1113 in which the archbishop of Capua indicated to the new bishop Rainulfo the churches of his diocese, in 1700 the edifice is mentioned in another document as being in poor conditions and crumbling. It was only in 2001 that the works of restoration were launched, which have restored each element of the architectural complex to its original splendor. the restoration of the church's trussed roof, the elimination of all ornamental overlaps and the recovery of the walls are of particular value.

IL TERRITORIO

IL CAPOLUOGO

LE CITTA' PRINCIPALI