Benevento is an Italian town of 55,645 inhabitants, capital of the province of the same name in Campania. In pre-Roman times Benevento, with the Oscan name of Malventum, was perhaps the most prominent settlement of the Samnite tribe of the Irpini. The Romans renamed it Beneventum, after they founded a colony there. An important road junction in ancient central southern Italy, in Roman times Benevento was crossed by the Appian Way and was the starting point of the Via Traiana. The city retains conspicuous vestiges from that era (such as the Trajan Arch, an honorific arch among the best preserved) largely included in the UNESCO World Heritage site named Via Appia. Regina Viarum. It was then decisive for the city’s history as the capital of a duchy, later a Lombard principality extended over a large portion of southern Italy, and surviving for a long time even after the fall of the Lombard Kingdom: emblematic of that period is the church of Santa Sofia, part with the adjoining cloister of the UNESCO site Lombards in Italy: places of power.
