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Mt. Taburno & Montesárchio Mt. Taburno (elev.
1400 meters). Montesárchio is the
town visible in the lower-right quadrant just at the beginning of the slopes. The Caudine Valley runs just below the town. (Also see photo, below.)  Burial sites containing
metal funerary objects on Mt. Taburno and the area of
modern Montesárchio attest to settlements dating
back to the end of the first Iron Age (c. 900 BC). Later,
beginning around 700 BC, more ornate artifacts, pottery,
coins, and other evidence indicate influences from and
exchanges with the new Greek enclaves along the Italian
coast, i.e. Magna Grecia. The
inhabitants of Taburno were identifiably what we now call
the Caudine Samnites, part of the larger Samnite group. The site on the slopes of Mt. Taburno has been fortified from ancient times, and the modern town is still characterized by a large castle and an adjacent cylindrical tower (photo, below). They are positioned strategically on the slopes of the mountain such that they dominate the approaches to the Caudine Valley (site of a famous military encounter between the Romans and the Samnites). (The Samnite name for their settlement on the slopes was "Caudium"; the Romans later changed the name to "Mons Arcis"—thus, "Montesárchio".)  The
larger castle is the last in a series of fortifications
that for many centuries guarded the strategic connection
between the Campanian plain and the Appenine interior. The
cylindrical tower on the west side of the castle and
separated from it was obviously built to be a watch tower
of some sort. It is much the older of the two structures
and is probably Samnite in origin. After the fall of Rome,
the Longobards in the 8th century strengthened the
position in order to better withstand the forces of
Charlemagne, and that was what developed into the large
fortress/castle that one sees today. (Such Longobard
defensive measures proved effective since Charlemagne
eventually gave up in his attempts to unite the entire
peninsula.)After the Longobards, Montesárchio was then occupied by the Normans (Roger II, founder of the Kingdom of Sicily) in 1137 and then by Frederick II (early 1200s). Under the Angevins, Montesárchio was part of the Della Leonessa fief (1268); in 1460, under the Aragonese, it passed to the counts of Carafa and then in 1540 to the princes of d'Avalos. It was under the Aragonese that the cylindrical tower was restructured into the form evident today; thus, the term still used today—the "Aragonese Tower". By the 12th century Montesárchio was a typical medieval hill-town protected by the older tower, the newer castle, and a defensive wall. It wasn't until much later that the populace started to creep down the slopes to where the modern town of Montesárchio lies. The Spanish refortified some of the site in the 1500s, although the major emphasis of the Spanish viceroys such as Toledo was on coastal defenses to protect the Bay of Naples, itself. During the Bourbon rule of Naples in the mid-1700s, the tower was a prison, and during the Risorgimento held illustrious "patriot" prisoners such as Carlo Poerio, Nicola Nisco, and Michele Pironte. During the early years of the 20th century, the premises were a penitentiary and, later, even an orphanage. In 1994, the complex was expropriated by the Ministry of Culture and converted into the National Archaeological Museum of Caudine Samnium. Not far from Montesárchio—out of the Caudine Valley, right around the corner of the mountain to the north—is a town called Sant' Agata de' Goti. It blocks entrance from the Volturno Valley to the Caudine Valley and the highlands in the interior, which is what it was supposed to do when it was still a pre-Roman Samnite town called Saticula. It was the "other" Caudine Samnite fortress town in the area. Samnite tombs from around 700 BC have been identified. The entire area, of course, is overlaid with later Roman fragments; in this area, at least, such remains tend not to be massive and monumental Roman masonry, but Roman roadbeds, some tombs and a few rustic farmhouses. The strange name, Sant' Agata de' Goti, ("of the Goths") does not derive from the Gothic presence in Italy in the 6th cenutry, but rather from De Goth, the name of the French family that received it in fief from Robert of Anjou in the 1300s. to main index to history portal
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