Cerreto Sannita

Orange Flag of the Italian Touring Club

In the Benevento area, at the gates of the Matese Regional Park, Cerreto Sannita can be considered a kind of 'purpose-built town', rebuilt after the devastating earthquake of 1688, with earthquake-proof criteria. It is an open town, without walls, and with an urban layout not centred around a castle or church.

In the historical centre, worth visiting are the Holy Trinity Cathedral, the parish church of San Martino with its curved staircase, the Museum of Sacred Art housed in the church of San Gennaro and many interesting 18th-century private palatial buildings. The town's pride and joy is its ceramic art: for centuries, the Titerno river has provided ceramists with the raw material to develop a craft that later became an art in its own right, and today, thanks to the workshops of its artisans, Cerreto Sannita is one of the 'ceramic towns of Italy'. Also worth visiting is the Cerreto Civic Museum of Ceramics, housed in the 18th-century former convent of Sant'Antonio.

The surrounding area is also noteworthy, with three hikes that lead to the discovery of spectacular and fascinating places: the path leading to Hannibal's bridge, on donkeyback, which tradition associates with the passage of the Carthaginian leader during the Second Punic War; the path to the three gorges of the Titerno, a series of gorges of high naturalistic value; and, finally, the path leading to the 'Leonessa', a limestone block 35 m in height which the elements have given a feline profile.

At the table, the wines stand out, including the Sannio and Falanghina, and the oil.