The New International Encyclopædia/Salerno

SALERNO, sȧ-lĕr′nō̇ (Lat. Salernum). The capital of the Province of Salerno (formerly Principato Citeriore), Italy, and the seat of an archbishop. It is beautifully situated at the head of the Gulf of Salerno, 34 miles southeast of Naples (Map: Italy, J 7). The principal street is the Corso Garibaldi along the water front. The harbor is protected from sand by a mole. There are good hotels, a municipal theatre, three hospitals, and normal, classical, and technical schools. The medical school of Salerno was the doyen of medical faculties in Europe. (See Salerno, School of.) The Cathedral San Matteo was built by Robert Guiscard (q.v.) and dedicated in 1084, but suffered by the restoration of 1768. Along the walls of the atrium are fourteen ancient sarcophagi used for Christian burials by the Normans. The bronze doors made in Constantinople date from the eleventh century and in the interior are ancient mosaics and frescoes. On the hill above the town are the ruins of a Lombard castle. Salerno markets wine, oil, fruit, cotton, tobacco, and silk, and manufactures cotton and woolen goods. The ancient Salernum, which at the time of the Second Samnite War still belonged to the Samnites, became later a Roman colony. After the fall of the Western Empire the town was successively held by the Lombards, the Normans, and the houses of Hohenstaufen and Anjou. Population (commune), in 1881, 31,245; in 1901, 42,727. Consult Schipa, Storia del principato longobardo di Salerno (Naples, 1887).