Salerno (anc. Salernum), a city of Southern Italy, on the gulf of the same name, 33 miles by rail SE. of Naples, with a pop. of 22,328. A hill behind the town is crowned by an old Norman castle. The beautiful Gothic cathedral of St Matthew (whose bones were brought from Pæstum in 954) was erected by the Normans (1076-84), and has in front of it a quadrangle of porphyry and granite pillars and inside it monuments of Gregory VII. and Margaret of Durazzo. One of its doors is of bronze, Byzantine work. The city was celebrated in the middle ages for its university (founded in 1150, closed in 1817), but especially for its school of medicine (Schola Salernitana), which was long the first in Europe (see Vol. VII. p. 117). In the neighbourhood are the ruins of Pæstum (q.v.). There are a couple of small harbours. Cotton is spun. Originally a Roman colony (194 B.C.), Salerno figures little in history until after it was taken by Robert Guiscard, who made it his capital. But the removal of the Norman court to Palermo and the sack of the city by the Emperor Henry VI. struck serious blows at its prosperity, and a third came from the decay of the medical school in the 14th century.
The Gulf of Salerno is a nearly semicircular indentation, separated from the Bay of Naples by the promontory ending in Point Campanella. On its shores stand Amalfi and Salerno.