Mercato San Severino nel Medioevo. Il castello e il suo territorio

Technical Information

Contributions by Angela Corolla, Sandra Lo Pilato, Paolo Peduto, Alfredo Maria Santoro, Franca Maria Vanni.

With the divided Ducatus of 949 the gastaldato of Rota was assigned to the Lombard principality of Salerno. Today only the toponym of the ancient Rota remains in the place where the ruins of the plebs of S. Maria rise, called a Rota, in the current municipality of Mercato San Severino in the terminal stretch of the Vesuvian plain, towards the South-East. In the years around 640, during the conquest of Salerno by the Benevento Lombards, Rota was destroyed (according to an uncertain historiographic tradition) for having its inhabitants resisted the Benevento ranks. From those years, most likely, the castle began to develop on the nearby Palco hill, which with the Norman family of Sanseverino almost reached its maximum extension and on the political level became the seat of the most powerful family in southern Italy. Archaeological investigations have highlighted the transformations of the fortified settlement which, from the mid-eleventh century to the beginning of the modern age, was the cornerstone of the most solid feudal structure of the kingdom of Naples.