Litto Castle

During the Norman period the lands of the valley were cleared and the villages of Quadrelle, Mugnano, Baiano and Sirignano were repopulated. These villages were then refounded as Casali dependent, politically and territorially, by a sort of federation between the individual towers. This federation was perhaps based in the Quadrelle tower.

Once the Swabians have arrived, the logic of the turrets halfway up, comes to an end; the weapons are now powerful, and more than to protect the vassals, few but large castles surrounded by high walls were needed to hold the fate of the Kingdom of Sicily. . And where to locate a large castle if not on the remains of the ancient Roman Villa of Caesarea?

This will be the only fortress in the area and will be called Castello del Litto and will belong to the county of Capua.

Old and new vassals will depend on it, without any political difference. The old towers, already destroyed between one battle and another, will be abandoned to their fate. Scrolling through the oldest documents found after the year 1000, Quadrelle appears as Casale del Castello del Litto, like Mugnano, Baiano and Sirignano. This means that if the town of Quadrelle belonged to the Castle, no less so was the town of Mugnano, defined, for many centuries, only as Ponte Munianum, the drawbridge that divided the County of Capua from that of Avellino.

Quadrelle therefore, like the other neighboring villages, four in all, because there are four medieval towers of the Castle, stood right near one of the guardhouses of the walls of the Castello del Litto, shortly before 1200.

The Castle of Mugnano del Cardinale, or at least what remains of it, stands on the heights of the Litto. Strategically located to dominate the underlying Gaudio valley and the road that from the Piana Nolana reaches Avellino and Irpinia, its vast territory occupies an area of ​​about 6,300 square meters with a 380-meter-long wall perimeter, and outlines an ad shape arch that adapts to the course of the top of the hill. The first historical events of the fiefdom are most likely linked to those of Avella as it was part of its territory and followed all the events.

During the Angevin period the Litto castle was given to Tommaso Scillato, and then passed, around 1300, to his son Riccardo, chamberlain of King Robert of Anjou. Subsequently there were many owners of the fief.

First Pietro II Anselone, then Niccolò Orsini, who returned it to the Abbey in 1395 and still in the hands of the Orsini family who kept it until 1428.

From that moment the Litto and the underlying center of Mugnano were governed by the commendatory of Montevergine by means of officers chosen from among the monks of the abbey.

The need to have a seat requires between 1467 and 1486 an abbey-style building, which was called the “Cardinal Palace”, in which, next to the monks, the commendatory cardinals had their temporary seat. The construction of the palace decreed the definitive decay of the fortress which had to be completely abandoned. In 1515 the fief of Mugnano was transferred to the Santa Casa dell'Annunziata in Naples which held it until the subversion of feudalism. One of the latest documentary evidence is that of Giustiniani who, at the beginning of the 19th century, describes the Litto site as a “fortress with a tower built in the middle ages”.

Of that ancient fortification that once shone only a few ruins remain half-buried in the vegetation.