Nusco

Nusco is a metropolis and comune inside the province of Avellino in the south of Italy, east of Naples, with c. 4,one hundred inhabitants. It is situated inside the mountains among the valleys of the Calorie Irion and Fantod Rivers. Hannibal crossed this area at some stage in the Punic Wars. As the legend is going, a number of Hannibal's elephants became ensconced within the dust of the river to the east. As his elephants drowned the General mourned the loss of life of those wonderful beasts. As such, the river that extends thru this valley have become called, and remains, the Fantod a corruption of Italian "elefante River. The Lombards built in Nusco a fortress to defend the valley from the Ofanto river to the Calore one. It played a very vital role between Irpinia's people until the seventeenth century.

In the 1656 a pandemic struck Irpinia killing as much as a 3rd of Nusco’s populace. In addition to its drastic impact on people, the plague irrevocably changed Nusco’s social shape. It commenced to lose its economic power, and until the second one half of of the 20th century Nusco’s records changed into strictly linked to the records of the Church. For years the city experienced the poverty and distress of rural towns. Vestiges of feudal relationships left the peasant farmers with little richness. In the past due nineteenth century, households left Nusco for different, wealthier regions of Italy, in addition to for brand new possibilities in South America and the United States. These emigrants from Nusco in no way forgot their roots. Some of them back to their place of origin.