San Severino (Centola)

San Severino is a frazione of the Italian comune of Centola, in the province of Salerno, Campania, called San Severino di Camerota until 1861.

The old village of San Severino is an abandoned medieval village above the valley of the river Mingardo, which here cuts a narrow gorge called the Gola del Diavolo (Devil's Gorge). It dates to the 10th-11th century and bears traces of every period up to the twentieth century, with the ruins of a castle and a church.

According to the humanist Pietro Summonte, the village took its name from the Sanseverino family, the most powerful and wealthy in the Principality of Salerno, first under the Normans and then in the Kingdom of Naples under the Angevins and Aragonese. Giuseppe Antonini takes the opposite view, arguing that it was the noble family that took its name from the village; so do Bozza and Domenicantonio Stanziola, a 19th-century priest and historian from Centola, according to whom the powerful Sanseverino family "was named after the castle and Borgo of Sanseverino".

The surviving historical sources suggest the settlement in the "Tragara" gorge above the river Mingardo began in the 7th century, founded by Bulgar mercenaries who migrated with their prince Aztek to the Lombard principality of Salerno, as Paul the Deacon reports in his Historia Langobardorum.

These soldiers were set to guard the Mingardo gorge and the main road to the Gulf of Policastro, which ran through the gorge and connected with the port of Palinuro.

The first settlement dates from this time, with a watchtower, whose remains can be seen from above, and the first houses for the soldiers.

Text: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · translated from Italian