Arechi II

Arechi, a Lombard prince, is the true and new founder of the city, which already existed in Roman times but had fallen into decay after the end of the empire. Longobard rule began in Italy in 568 with the conquest of Friuli, which was followed in a few years by the conquest of the entire peninsula, especially, in its inland areas. The Lombards were the last “barbarians” to invade Italy. A Germanic population of Scandinavian origin, they were nomadic warriors divided into social classes, at the head of which were, precisely, warriors. From Cividale to Pavia, the capital, from Spoleto to Benevento, the Lombard cities for two centuries were the centers of political life in Italy. In 774 Charlemagne descended into Italy and defeated the last Longobard king, Desiderius, after repudiating the daughter Ermengarda whom he had married (who remembers, “Scattered the soft braids on her weary breast…?”). Northern Italy was, therefore, annexed to the reconstituted Western Roman Empire.
Only Benevento and the southern part of the peninsula remained Lombard, and here Arechi, who had married another daughter of Desiderius, laid the foundations of Langobardia Minor, as the southern part of Lombard rule came to be called.
Arechi decided to find an outlet to the sea, and, therefore, moved to Salerno, followed by a group of Lombard nobles, and refounded it as his new capital. He strengthened the castle built by the Byzantines, a castle still named after him, built a large palace for himself on the seafront, and built the Palatine Chapel, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, in the place where we can still visit it today.
Arechi ruled Salerno until 787 for nearly thirty years and sought, on the one hand, to live in peace with Charlemagne, a cumbersome neighbor from the north, and, on the other, to expand the city’s power to the south, at the expense of the Byzantines, thus marking Salerno’s policy for the next centuries. The Chronicon, written by an anonymous citizen of Salerno in the 10th century, tells of the splendor of Arechi’s palace, and thus describes the reception of Charlemagne’s ambassador:
“At the one and the other side of the staircase of the palace he had some young men arranged, holding with their hands sparrow-hawks and other such birds; distributed then, teenage pages, of whom some were also holding with their hands sparrow-hawks, others different birds, while other young men were playing among themselves by a table. Here and there he arranged scattered, as has been said elderly people, and finally he arranged in a circle some old men holding a staff, and surrounded by them, in a golden throne, sat the prince.” Paul the Deacon, the Lombard historian who lived at his court, wrote farewell verses in his honor: “You adorned the country with science, buildings, royalty, for which eternal will be your glory. You have been to your subjects peace, harbor, salvation, glory, delight, universal love.”
The Lombard principality lasted for more than three centuries, until the arrival of Robert Guiscard, the Norman who finally unified the whole of southern Italy and laid the foundations of the kingdom that was later founded by his grandson Roger.