Trentovamare - Agropoli

Agropoli, the gateway to the National Park of Cilento and the Diano Valley, with its 21.000 inhabitants, has always been the Capital of Cilento.

Its origin disappears in the dim and distant past: the first settlement, “Ercula”, springs up on the St. Mark’s Littoral and dates back to the I century B.C. The life of Ercula, linked with the sea industry , became with time an indispensable port also for the neighbouring prosperous Paestum.

The Vandal invasions, with all the devastation and plundering, brought about the abbandoning of Ercula, and the then “Agropolitans”, at the end of the V century A.D., moved to the promontory founding the original settlement of the future Agropoli. The Byzantines of Belisarius, in 544, during the war against the Gothes of Totila “The Immortal”, fortified it giving it the name of “Acròpolis”, the upper town. In 590 it was a bishop’s see, with the bishop Felice finding shelter there from the Longobard invasion.

It was occupied by the Saracens from 882 to 915, who used Agropoli as a base for their raids into Cilento. In 1222 St. Francis of Assisi reached Agropoli, however, derided by unbelieving Agropolitans he got onto a rock and “preached” to the fish. In 1290, during the “War of the Sicilian Vespers”, Charles II d’Anjou (called “the Lame”), king of Sicily, came to Agropoli in order to coordinate the fortification works of the castle. In 1630 it was the scene of the “historic” invasion of the Turks: it was saved by the flocking noblemen and lords of Cilento. The castle and the town witnessed the sad vicissitudes of Luisa Sanfelice, who often lived there, before being beheaded in the Market Square in Naples on the 9th September of 1800 as a result of the ferocious repressions by the Bourbon king Ferdinand IV, in the tragic epilogue of the Neapolitan Republic of 1799. “Our” Filippo Patella, priest, left the cassock in order to follow Garibaldi and his “Thousand”.

Between 1931 and 1934 the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti passes by and visits Agropoli: one of his poems sealed the beauty of the “alta rupe” (high rock). Here was interned in 1935 the politician Franco Antonicelli, one of the most prominent 20th-century Piedmontese intellectuals.On the Agropoli-Salerno Coast took place the landing of the allied forces on September 9th in 1943, with the “Avalanche” operation: an important page in the History of the World War II.

The Castle and the town fascinated also the great French writer Marguerite Yourcenar: after visiting Agropoli in 1925, she developed the idea of using the castle as a “summer residence” of the characters of her famous book, “As the water that flows”. In the seventies it was the “place of hope” and the destination of “pilgrimages” of the numerous sufferers from the century disease, thanks to the anticancer “serum” of the veterinarian Bonifacio. Danilo Dolci, poet and educationalist, a frequent visitor of our town for meetings and seminars, was awarded the honorary Freedom of the Town on April 18th in 1991. This is Agropoli and...still much more.