Solofra

City of Tanning and Baroque art in Campania halfway between the Picentini Mountains and the Irno Valley, Solofra is one of the richest centers of history and culture in Irpinia Strategic settlement between the Sabato and the Irno valleys, since the Samnite period, Solofra has played a strategic role in this part of Irpinia and whose influence on the rest of the territory grew in the Lombard period when the village as we know it was defined today around the splendid Collegiate Church of San Mi read more

City of Tanning and Baroque art in Campania halfway between the Picentini Mountains and the Irno Valley, Solofra is one of the richest centers of history and culture in Irpinia Strategic settlement between the Sabato and the Irno valleys, since the Samnite period, Solofra has played a strategic role in this part of Irpinia and whose influence on the rest of the territory grew in the Lombard period when the village as we know it was defined today around the splendid Collegiate Church of San Michele Arcangelo, patron saint of the city. Rebuilt in the 16th century to replace the Byzantine Pieve di Sant'Angelo and Santa Maria, the Collegiate Church represents one of the main places of worship and beauty of Solofra and Irpinia, a priceless jewel of Baroque art, in which the 42 canvases are placed depicting scenes from the Old and New Testament painted by Francesco Guarini and Giovanni Tommaso, as well as notable works by Giovan Bernardo Lama, Francesco and Angelo Solimena, sulfur artists. Solofra is known all over the world for the tanning of sheep and goat skins used by the great luxury and Haute Couture brands. Indigenous activity born in the locality of Toppolo in ancient times and linked to sheep farming, with rudimentary systems in open-air pits, flourished over the centuries thanks to the favorable meteorological and orographic conditions of the area, up to the great development in contemporary age when leather processing took on a properly industrial connotation and transform Solofra into one of the three main industrial tanning districts of Italy and Europe. Current seat of the Town Hall, the Palazzo Ducale Orsini is one of the sites of greatest historical and artistic prestige in Solofra. The work of the architect Floro Campanie, it is a monumental Renaissance-style building, built in the 16th century by the will of the feudal lords of the time, the Orsini di Gravina family who ruled the city until the end of Feudalism. read less