Battipaglia, buffalo mozzarella DOP

About 25 km south-east of Salerno in the province of the same name, in the Sele plain 10 km from the Tyrrhenian coast, there is Battipaglia, a town of 50,200 inhabitants. Of Greek origin and later a Roman colony, the village derives its name from the wheat and straw threshing activity carried out by the farmers, underlining its strongly agricultural roots. The center expanded in 1859 when Ferdinand II of Bourbon, king of the Two Sicilies, made it an agricultural colony in the municipality of Eboli, equipping it with new buildings to accommodate laborers from other areas and providing the necessary means to reclaim the territory and encourage crops, as well as that of wheat, cereals and the planting of olive trees and vineyards in the hilly area. In 1943 the city was almost completely razed to the ground by Anglo-American air raids, to be rebuilt in a short time thanks to the resources of the territory and to record an exponential population increase in the 1950s and 1960s during the period of its transformation into a pole. of industrial development with the support of the traditional companies of transformation of agricultural products, steel industries and electrical equipment in a continuous cycle. But the current excellence of Battipaglia is food, being known as the main production center of buffalo mozzarella from Campania DOP, famous all over the world and number one attraction of food and wine tourism in the area.