centro storico, di pianura, fluviale, a scacchiera, Capua

Capua is a fortress city of the plain, its layout a clear, deliberate grid. The river is near; the land is flat. But this is no sprawling town. Development was sharply limited: no new building beyond the walls. The consequence is a dense, layered urban fabric, where private houses and churches alike have been stacked and repurposed over centuries. The most dramatic changes came between the early 1600s and the late 1700s, when the military need for barracks transformed many of the city’s exquisite convent complexes into something more practical. The result is a curious mix. Here, a Longobard castle from the eleventh century, with its merloned tower and ogival windows; there, a cathedral with granite columns and polychrome marble floor. Norman churches survive, as do a fourteenth-century palace with arabesque decoration and a fifteenth-century one with a splendid Catalan-Moorish portal. Capua wears its history not as a museum, but as a working garment, much altered, still in use.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.