Aversa

Comune in Campania, Italy

Aversa
Comune
Comune di Aversa
Arco dell'Annunziata
Coat of arms
Location of Aversa in Caserta Province
Location of Aversa
St. Paul
Saint day	January 25
Website	Official website

Aversa (Italian:

Aversa is located near the city of Naples; it is separated by only 24 kilometres from Naples and by 26 kilometres from Caserta, the administrative centre of the province of the same name. The municipality borders Carinaro, Casaluce, Cesa, Frignano, Giugliano in Campania, Gricignano di Aversa, Lusciano, San Marcellino, Sant'Antimo, Teverola and Trentola Ducenta.^[3]

It is located in a fertile coastal plain north of Naples, thus serving as a market for agricultural products to the city. The plain on which it sits was known in ancient Roman times as the Campania Felix.^[4]

History

Prehistory

Archaeological sites excavated near Aversa have revealed human presence in the area since the

In any case, because of endemic malaria that ravaged the region, the primitive city was abandoned.[4]

Lower middle ages

Only a small military fortification, a castellum, still stands in the area, which is linked to a chapel in memory of the current alleged passage through Aversa by the Apostle Paul in the year 61. A.D., via the Roman road that ran towards Rome.^[4]

Aversa County

See also

List of Counts of Aversa

.

The present-day Aversa, which replaced the nearby city of Atella that had been laid waste during the Gothic Wars, was the first of the Norman territories in the Mediterranean. In 1030, the site was ceded to Rainulf Drengot, a cadet of the lords of Quarrel near Alençon in Normandy; he was invested as count by Duke Sergius IV of Naples and confirmed by Emperor Conrad II. By offering a generous principle of asylum for the persecuted, Rainulf enlarged the power and importance of his little borgo, which became the base from which the Normans forged a state in Sicily and Italy. The diplomacy of Robert Guiscard, who built the fortifications, led to the investiture of a bishop responsible to the Pope at Aversa, which was nominally territory of the Eastern Emperor.^[5] One of the first bishops was the Norman Guitmund (died c. 1090–95), a Benedictine monk, theologian, and opponent of Berengar of Tours.

The count of Aversa,

When Alfonso V of Aragon permanently enthroned the kingdom of Naples within the domains of the Crown of Aragon, Aversa continued to maintain the privileges it had enjoyed. Soon the epidemics and subdivisions of land caused it to be relegated as a peripheral urban center of Naples.^[4]

Fifteenth century

In the fourteenth or fifteenth century the County of Aversa was taken over by a family from Valencia, the Pròixida.^[6] In fact, the palace of the Count of Almenara in Almenara (Castellón) is also known as the palace of the Count of Aversa.^[7]

Demographics

Gastronomy

Aversa DOC

• The Romanesque
  Saint Paul, has a spectacular ambulatory and a majestic octagonal dome. Francesco Solimena's Madonna of the Gonfaloneand the Quattrocento painter Angiolillo Arcuccio
  's Martyrdom of St Sebastian are in the Duomo. The pre-Romanesque sculpture of St George and the Dragon is one of the few surviving free-standing sculptures of its date. An outstanding collection of Baroque liturgical silver is kept in the Treasury.
• The Baroque Church of San Francesco delle Monache.
• The Ospedale Psichiatrico Santa Maria Maddalena founded by Joachim Murat in 1813 which was the oldest Judicial Psychiatric Hospital in Italy and the center of many accusations of abuse.
• The Real Casa dell'Annunziata.
• The Benedictine Abbey of San Lorenzo, founded in the 10th century, with a fine Renaissance cloister.
• The Church of Santa Maria a Piazza, founded in the 10th century, has frescoes of the school of Giotto.
• Other churches in the city conserve paintings by
  Teodoro d'Errico, Francesco de Mura, Massimo Stanzione, and Paolo de Maio
  .
• The Historic Former Railway station (Stazione Ferrovia Napoli Piedimonte D'Alife) of a long closed 1913 railway
• The Historic Aragonese Castle which now houses the Italian Penitentiary Police (Italy's Correction Officers) training facility

Twin towns

• Pratola Serra, Italy
• Alife, Italy

See also

• Roman Catholic Diocese of Aversa

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Aversa.

• (in Italian) Aversa official website
• Buonaiuti, Ernesto (1907). "Diocese of Aversa" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• "Aversa" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. III (9th ed.). 1878. p. 152.
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aversa" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 59.