Minori, Campania

Antiquity

Archaeological evidence shows that Minori is the oldest inhabited site on the Amalfi Coast. Beneath the flat ground of the modern town lies a maritime Roman villa of the 1st century AD, originally arranged on two floors, of which only the lower one survives. The villa, decorated with frescoes and mosaics, probably belonged to a member of the senatorial or equestrian patriciate and remained in use throughout the Julio-Claudian period. It was gradually abandoned and eventually buried by volcanic debris washed downstream after eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, with the original settlement disappearing from the historical record around the 4th century AD.^[4]

Middle Ages

Local tradition holds that the original settlement, located on the inland hill of Forcella, was abandoned in the 7th century, when the relics of Saint Trofimena were said to have been miraculously found on the underlying beach; the inhabitants then refounded the town along the shore, dedicating a church to the saint.^[7]

Throughout the Middle Ages, Minori shared the fortunes of Amalfi and the rest of the coast, falling first within the Byzantine Duchy of Naples and, after the Lombard raids of the 9th century, within the autonomous Duchy of Amalfi. In the winter of 838, the Lombard prince Sicard of Benevento sacked Amalfi and removed the relics of Saint Trofimena, which had been transferred to Amalfi from Minori in anticipation of the attack, to enshrine them in his own city; the relics returned permanently to Minori less than a year later, following Sicard's assassination.^[8] The town was created a suffragan diocese of Amalfi in 987 in recognition of the cult, and acquired the status of civitas in the 13th century.^[9] Despite this growth, Minori was repeatedly damaged by seaborne raids: it was attacked by the Saracen leader Boalim in the 10th century and sacked in 1135 by Pisan galleys during the Norman conquest of Amalfi.

Early modern period

Under Spanish viceregal rule the town strengthened its sea defences against incursions by Barbary pirates, including a raid by Hayreddin Barbarossa in the 16th century.^[10] The period was a difficult one: a violent storm on 11 April 1597 destroyed much of the town walls along the shore, the 1631 eruption of Vesuvius caused widespread damage, and the plague of 1656 killed 355 people out of a population of roughly 1,100.^[11] In 1799, during the short-lived Parthenopean Republic, Minori was "municipalised and democratised" by elements of the local bourgeoisie and clergy, who raised a liberty pole in the central square.^[12] The construction of the coastal road later known as the Amalfi Drive, begun in 1811 and completed in 1852, ended the centuries-old isolation of the Amalfi Coast.

Contemporary period

After the unification of Italy in 1860, Minori's traditional industries, in particular its paper mills and pasta workshops, entered a long decline. In September 1943, the town was one of the landing points of the Salerno landing: on 9 September the British X Corps under General Richard McCreery came ashore at Minori.^[13] On 25–26 October 1954, the town was struck by the Salerno flood: although less severely affected than the neighbouring villages, Minori lost three inhabitants and saw its two paper mills and mechanical workshop destroyed.^[14] The town was also affected by the 1980 Irpinia earthquake.