The Saticula of the Samnites is dominating Valle Caudina from the rock outcrop, which rises along the slopes of Monte Taburno.
Sant’Agata de’ Goti (of the Goths), on the border with the province of Caserta, in the heart of Samnium (vitate) lands, is among the most beautiful hamlets of Italy and it keeps precious testimonies of its long and fascinating history, inevitably influenced by the peculiar position of the tufa plateau overlooking the valley.
On the top, in 343 B.C, there was a Roman castrum. Then, during the second Samnite war, in 315 B.C, the village of Saticula continued the roman siege before capitulating. When the Roman Empire fell, Huns, Vandals and Goths suffered many other attacks and raids. With the advent of the Lombards; Saticula started changing its name, dedicated to Saint Agata. It was then that, the edifices of the roman village progressively demolished, new constructions replaced them, taking advantage of the ancient architectonic elements. The ducal castle was built, at the highest point of the natural cliff. The Normans amplified the castle and strengthened the defences in the 11th century. Still during the Norman times, the feud was given to Drengot family, whose name changed to De Goth and the entire village became Sant’Agata De Goth, hence the toponym with which we know it.
The old town with a semi-circular plan has fully kept its medieval characteristics. From the Dome dedicated to the Assunta built in 970, with a Romanesque crypt which has survived, and then rebuilt in 12th century and restructured several times until Baroque period. The church of Sant’Angelo in Munculanis is Lombard, with a basilica plan and three naves, with a pronaos at the main entrance, characterised by two columns and near the campanile; recently a crypt has come to light with putridariums. An amazing mix of styles and superimpositions are connoting the church of Annunziata of 13th century, originally outside the village, which then has included it over the years. The façade is Baroque, it has a basilica plan with roof-trusses and it shows fourteenth-century frescoes in the apse recently restored such as the fifteenth-century Last Judgement. The church of San Francesco of the first half of 15th century keeps an eighteenth-century ceramic floor of Giuseppe Massa, the creator of the cloister of Santa Chiara in Naples, and, coeval, the wooden ceiling of the eighteen-century and finally, the marble portal. The annexed convent is a municipal headquarter and it hosts an archaeological exhibition with a section dedicated to the Samnites and one to the Lombard period. The 7th century church of San Menna (Saint Menas) is very old and was built within the Byzantine age. Robert Drengot was the one who, in 1097, brought there the body of San Menna, an hermit on the Taburno in 4th century. Between the bishops of Sant’Agaata, there has been Sant’Alfonso de’ Liguori, who built the church of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli.
Among the many noble palaces, we can notice Palazzo Parisi of the 12th century under which a system of interconnected caves has been dug, and it hots an exhibition of torture instruments of the Inquisition.
Four towers used as a prison and some frescoes of Tommaso Giaquinto of 1710 remain of Castello Ducale, fortress first and then a residence during the Renaissance. The Museo diocesano has an archaeological and a religious art section in the church of Madonna del Carmine and in the Palazzo vescovile, a section dedicated to Sant’Alfonso, to which a monument on the square is dedicated. Around the old town, the streams Martorano and Riello run, tributaries of the Isclero, which touches the territory of Sant’Agata in the north, where it passes under the old Ponte Viggiano.
