Vinchiaturo

The Locality: Rising in a landscape of thick forests, surrounded by the Matese mountains on the one side and the Sannio mountains on the other, amid hills sloping down towards the plains, this center still relies on agriculture, dairy products, firewood, and on many small industries of ceramic, glass and iron. More recently tourism has been growing especially in the summer, when Vinchiaturo is a favorite starting point for excursions into the mountains.

The name seems to derive from the Samnite Vincula Tauri, which was a kind of concentration camp where the Romans imprisoned the rebel Samnites. The present town rises between the two hills of the monastery and the castle. The Samnites had a fortress, Ruffirium, in the area now called Monteverde. There was then a Roman settlement and later, in medieval times, about 650 AD, a Benedictine monastery, the abbey of Monteverde, an important center of culture and craftswork, especially stone-carving, for many centuries, until the ruinous earthquake of 1456, which destroyed the monastery, sparing however the church. Another earthquake in 1688 compelled the monks to move away, and finally another earthquake in 1805 completely destroyed what was still left.