Monte Tifata

Mount Tifata is a 602 m high mountain relief belonging to the Campania
Apennines. Around 216 BC as Silio Italico wrote, “Hannibal camps on
Tifata where the hill overlooks the walls more closely and from there
observers the city”. The Tifata is a watershed between the urbanized and
industrialized of the province of Naples and Caserta and a part of the
territory that resist its agricultural vocation. On the small peak located
south-east of the highest peak we find the Temple of Jupiter Tifatino. The
temple occupied the top at 526 in height. On the site some structures of
the temple are evident, such as the foundations and the single-room cell
with a short flight of steps. A few years ago the Cross was placed in place
of the old, worn out by thunderstorm, placed by the Scout group of
Capua in the 1980s. The new Cross carried technological innovations as
well as being larger than the previous one. It was equipped with
photovoltaic panels that insured energy to the night lighting system. On
the very top you can see ancient walls of times past. The historian
M. Monaco reports that the mountain was called Mount S. Agata; the
presence in a cave, of a holy hermit, S. Offa, who lived towards 1070,
certainly contributed to making the mountain a place of pilgrimage and
devotion, making it also called for a long time with the name of Mount S.
Agata. Other important testimonies are found along the slopes of Mount
Tifata; its south-western slope, which gravitates towards the site of the
ancient city of Capua, preserves many evident remains of the Roman
presence that occupied the slopes and the summit with installations of
agricultural villas, aqueducts, defense posts and funerary monuments.