22 Facts About Salerno

Salerno is an ancient city and comune in Campania and is the capital of the namesake province.

Today Salerno is an important cultural and economic centre in Campania and Italy.

Human settlement at Salerno has a rich and vibrant past, dating back to pre-historic times.

Patron saint of Salerno is Saint Matthew, the Apostle, whose relics are kept here at the crypt of Salerno Cathedral.

In 839 Salerno declared independence from Benevento, becoming the capital of a flourishing principality stretching out to Capua, northern Calabria and Apulia up to Taranto.

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In 1077 Salerno reached its zenith but soon lost all its territory to the Normans.

In 1100, Salerno was made the capital of Norman southern Italy, after Melfi.

Salerno was the most important city of the Normans for half a century, but with the Norman conquest of southern Italy, the city of Palermo started to substitute Salerno as the most important city for the Normans.

Indeed, Salerno played a little part in the fall of the County of Sicily, after the Emperor Henry VI's invasion on behalf of his wife, Constance, the heiress to the kingdom, in 1191, Salerno surrendered and promised loyalty on the mere news of an incoming army.

Salerno was an active center of Carbonari activities supporting the unification of Italy in the 19th century.

The majority of the population of Salerno supported ideas of the Risorgimento, and in 1861 many of them joined Garibaldi in his struggle for unification.

In 1877 the city was the site of as many as 21 textile mills employing around ten thousand workers; in comparison with the four thousand employed in Turin's textile industry, Salerno was sometimes referred to as the "Manchester of the two Sicilies".

In September 1943, during World War II, Salerno was the scene of Operation Avalanche, the invasion of Italy launched by the Allies of World War II, and suffered a great deal of damage.

In those months Salerno was the provisional government seat of the Kingdom of Italy, and the King Vittorio Emanuele III lived in a mansion in its outskirts.

Salerno has a Mediterranean climate, with a hot and relatively dry summer and a rainy fall and winter .

The average age of Salerno residents is 42 compared to the Italian average of 42.

Economy of Salerno is mainly based on services and tourism, as most of the city's manufacturing base did not survive the economic crisis of the 1970s.

Salerno is connected to the A2, Autostrada A3 and Autostrada A30 motorways.

The main bus stop of Salerno is at the train station, with both CSTP buses and SITA buses.

Salerno airport is located in the neighboring towns of Pontecagnano Faiano and Bellizzi.

Salerno hosted the oldest medical school in the world, the Schola Medica Salernitana, the most important source of medical knowledge in Europe in the early Middle Ages.

Salerno is located at the geographical center of a triangle nicknamed Tourist Triangle of the 3 P's .