For nine years, – from 1686 to 1695 -, Vico stayed in the rooms of the castle of Vatolla, with the task of following and educating the children of the marquis; at the same time, thanks to the rich library of the castle, he was able to deepen his studies in literature and philosophy, until 1697, the year in which the scholar obtained the chair of eloquence at the University of Naples.
In those very rooms the Vichian Museum was created. The building that houses the museum is a fortress with a trapezoidal plan and small elegant turrets that rise at its corners; it dates back to the Lombard period and has naturally been remodeled several times from the sixteenth century onwards. The small manor is now known as the de Vargas castle, named after the last owning family, and serves as the town’s center of gravity, overlooking the central square.
The castle was inhabited from 1535 by the lords of the town, who were the Griso family, the Del Pezzo, the Rocca marquises, and the de Vargas Machuca marquises. The town was a fiefdom of the Royal Monastery of the Holy Trinity of the city of Cava, as shown in the register of Benedictine fiefs (1791 – 1805).
Vatolla is situated along a ridge of the gentle hills of Cilento, a few kilometers from Agropoli. The small village almost entirely preserves its ancient identity, both architecturally and culturally. Here the citizens are very careful not to disperse into nothing the centuries of culture that have accompanied the life of the small center.
The tradition has preserved an ancient religious rite, the “Flight of the Angel,” while through collective intelligence many tools and work instruments have been patiently collected, constituting today a rich collection of peasant material, kept in the old cellars of the castle. The restoration of the ancient houses is also carried out with great care, bringing to light the bare stone now choked by many layers of plaster.
In a very panoramic position, on the outskirts of the town, there is a Franciscan convent from the 1600s. It was built over the ruins of a chapel from the 1500s, of which only a wall remains with a fresco representing a “Pietà”. Inside the convent there are a beautiful cloister and a maiolica-decorated refectory with a large fresco depicting the “Last Supper,” a work by Giuseppe De Vivo in 1738.
The Municipality of Vatolla, always in respect of a recovery and safeguarding plan of its territory, plans the restoration of the ancient water mill, built a short distance from the castle, in a small gorge where the water of a stream (now almost dry) in the past powered its blades.
