Castel Volturno

Italy, Italy

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Castel Volturno is a coastal municipality in the Province of Caserta in Campania, southern Italy, located about 35 kilometers northwest of Naples and 35 kilometers west of Caserta at the mouth of the Volturno River where it flows into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The town, whose name means "castle on the River Volturno," has an impressive 25-kilometer coastline with beaches backed by 10 kilometers of pine forests and sits on the ancient Domitiana coast in a volcanic area where wealthy Roman patricians once built leisure villas.

Originally settled by the Oscans and Etruscans who called it Volturnum, it became a major Roman trading center and colony in 194 BC, reached by the Via Domitiana in 95 AD, serving as a crucial commercial crossroads for merchants traveling to Capua. The town features the remains of its medieval castello built after 856 on a destroyed Roman bridge, the square Torre di Patria tower that has guarded the coast for centuries, and various charming chapels scattered throughout the seaside area.

Today Castel Volturno has approximately 27,830 residents, with about two-thirds being immigrants, and serves as both an agricultural center boosted by land reclamation during the Fascist era and a summer destination attracting around 200,000 visitors. Unfortunately, the town is also known for severe problems including illegal construction that destroyed 13 kilometers of protected coastal dunes, illegal dumping making nearby waterways one of the world's largest open-air dumps, and having one of Europe's highest crime rates due to the presence of the Casalesi criminal clan, which perpetrated a deadly massacre there in 2008.