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SALERNO |
  
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| Salerno is the hinge point joining two lines of coast where history has left different signs that are appreciated today as "characters". One of these geographical lines is the Amalfi coast to the west, the other is the Cilento coast, or Sele Valley, to the east. This dual feature gives Salerno an inestimable treasure, with the imprint of originality. Salerno is of course more than a simple hinge pin, for it in turn has its own culture which goes back to the School of Medicine that was founded and flourished there in the Early Middle Ages. Today the "Hippocratic town" is a tourist centre that presents many faces, with a very "noble" history and culture. Its Roman roots, the memories of its period as a Longobard capital and main centre of the Norman domains are reflected in many places, from the Etruscan-Samnite Necropolis to the Cathedral, from the castle of Arechi to the church of San Pietro a Corte, the nave of the Congrega di Santo Stefano where the students of the School of Medicine received their degrees, and in the "Alfonso Tafuri" Museum of Ceramics. Salerno hosts two festivals: the international film festival and the cabaret festival; its pride in its present-day activities is seen in the Fosof, the Hardware and Software Exhibition, which is seen as a step forward into the future. The active and, indeed, creative connection between Salerno's present situation and its splendid past that fades in the iridescent dawn of Mediterranean myths is expressed in the events that have been devised in the various towns in the province and that have become attractions that Italian and foreign tourists should not miss. Here we need mention but a few: the Regatta of the Marine Republics at Amalfi, where the "local" galleon challenges those of Genoa, Pisa and Florence; the famous Film Festival, unique in its kind, is held at Giffoni, another unique event is the Festival of Myth, at Palinuro, while the Wagner Festival is held at Ravello. Each of these events, like the Premio Charlot or Chaplin Prize, makes an original proposal: they recall a glorious past, when this coast was open to the exchange of goods and ideas; they delve deep into the mythology and fantasy of Greece, the mother of so many colonies that now belong to Salerno; the music proposed is steeped in old Germanic legends, in a tumultuous encounter between heroes and gods; last but not least comes the cinema, the language of modern civilization, in which the other arts converge as tributaries that merge with the main stream of the film.
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