Benevento

It’s the countryside around Benevento that is of most appeal, and there are a handful of low-key attractions worth basing a tour around. Back towards Caserta from Benevento, just off the main road, MONTESARCHIO overlooks the Caudine Valley, a small town whose main claim to fame is its Castle - home to the powerful D’Avalos family in the sixteenth century and a stronghold for political prisoners in the nineteenth century. The poet Carlo Poerio was incarcerated here, a fact recorded by a plaque above the entrance. The town itself is worth a quick wander, no more, before moving on to SANT’AGATA DEI GOTI , way off the main road at the foot of the limestone massif of Monte Taburno . One of the best-preserved small towns of Campania, with hardly any disfigurement from building speculation (highly unusual in these parts), and an almost untouched, shuttered centre of small squares, old palaces and narrow vaulted streets that is host to a good Sunday-morning market, it’s a nice place just to wander, especially if you can coincide with the market. Of a number of minor sights, there is a rather wet Castle , with some surprisingly well-preserved frescoes from the primeval eighteenth century, a slightly listing Duomo , with an elegantly carved thirteenth-century crypt, and any number of small churches and tiny courtyards. There’s no real reason to stay, but if you do find yourself here in the evening, the castle’s rather dimly lit restaurant makes for an atmospheric place to take - not cheap, but serving imaginative food, washed down with good local red wine (no closing day).

Benevento is roughly 60km from Naples, and buses run roughly every two hours from Piazza Garibaldi - an hour-and-a-half trip. Trains stop down the hill from the centre and are in any case slower and more infrequent. Benevento is easily seen on a day excursion and there’s no need to stay , but if you’re actuation on easterly to Fóggia and Puglia (to which there are regular train connections), or if you get stuck, the Genova , at Viale Principe di Napoli 130 (tel 0824.42.926; up to L60,000/¬30.99), is an adequate hotel. For food , if you’re just here for the day you’re likely to be content with the snacks, pizza and tavola calda -style dishes at Pizzeria Romana , next door to the cathedral on the corner of Via Carlo Torre (no closing day). For evening intake there are adequate restaurants dotted on and around the main Corso Garibaldi.

BENEVENTO , further inland than Cápua or Caserta and reachable in about an hour and a half from city by bus, was another important Roman settlement, a key point on the Via Appia between Rome and Brindisi and as such a thriving trading town. Founded in 278 BC, it was at the time the farthest point from Rome to be colonized, and even now it has a remote air about it, circled by hills and with a centre that was (pointlessly) bombed to smithereens in the last war and even now seems only half rebuilt. Its climate also ranks among southern Italy’s most extreme.

The Town

Buses from city drop you on the main square, where the Duomo is an almost total reconstruction of its thirteenth-century Romanesque original; what’s left of its famous bronze doors, believed to be Byzantine, is now stashed inside. Left from here, the main street, Corso Garibaldi , leads up the hill, a once elegant thoroughfare lined with ancient palaces. Off to the left about halfway up, the Arch of Trajan is the major remnant of the Roman era, a marvellously preserved triumphal arch that is refreshing after the scaffolding and netting of Rome’s arches, since you can get close enough to study its friezes. Built to guard the entrance to Benevento from the Appian Way, it’s actually as heavy-handed a piece of self-acclaim as there ever was, showing the Emperor Trajan in various scenes of triumph, power and generosity. Further up Corso Garibaldi, the Museo Sannio (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm), in the cloister behind the eighth-century church of Santa Sofia, holds a selection of Roman finds from the local area, including a number of artefacts from a temple of Isis - various sphinxes, bulls and a headless statue of Isis herself. There are also terracotta votive figurines from the fifth century BC, and the cloister itself has capitals carved with energetic scenes of animals, humans and strange beasts - hunting, riding and attacking. There are more bits and pieces from Roman times scattered around the rather battered old quarter of town, the Triggio - reached by following Via Carlo Torre off to the left of the main road beyond the cathedral. The Bue Apis , at the far end of Corso Dante, is another relic from the temple of Isis, a first-century BC sculpture of a bull. And in the heart of the old quarter there are the substantial remains of a Teatro Romano built during the reign of Adrian - though it’s been a little over-restored for modern use. In Hadrian’s time it seated 20,000 people, rather less today as the upper level remains mossily decrepit, but it’s still an atmospheric sight - looking out over the green rolling countryside of the domain beyond and, like most of Benevento, relatively unvisited by tourists.