The monument to Giovanni Nicotera is at the center of the Villa Comunale, to remember the MP elected in Salerno and several times minister. In the Villa there is also the monument to Pisacane, who with him led the unfortunate expedition of Sapri.
1818
1857
Resurgent Patriots
In the Villa Comunale of Salerno, at the centre of the square is the bronze statue of Giovanni Nicotera, a Calabrian politician who is
linked to Salerno for many reasons. It was in fact the lieutenant of Carlo Pisacane, who at the head of the “three hundred, young and strong”, in 1857 landed in Sapri for that tragic insurrection that was then carried out successfully three years later by Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Nicotera, just twenty years old, was at the side of Garibaldi in 1848 in Rome, and then organized together with Pisacane the expedition to Sapri, which, due to betrayal and bad organization, led to the defeat of the riots, to the death of Pisacane, to the arrest of Nicotera, who was imprisoned and tried in Salerno – in the current seat of the State Archives – sentenced to death, then changed condemnation. But Garibaldi released him in 1860, and after a youth of insurrections and a life dedicated to the Unity of Italy, he was elected to the Parliament in Salerno and, exponent of the Left, became Minister of the Interior in the De Pretis government in 1876.
Again he was Minister of the Interior in 1891, but this time in a Destra government, to which he had become, characterizing himself for the harsh repression of the nascent socialist movements.
Carlo Pisacane did not have this fate, he died in the expedition to Sansa, a village in Cilento. He is also dedicated a monument in the Villa Comunale, the first to him erected. A secluded and almost hidden monument, which recalls, however, compared to the controversial and contradictory political life of Nicotera, who the gods love those who die young people. At least they will remain faithful to the ideals of youth.
