Two kilometres from the Greek temples of Paestum stands a brick shed where women once graded tobacco leaf. Gillo Dorfles called it the symbol of the Piana del Sele.
At a glance
Borgo Cafasso is a company village. It grew in the first decades of the twentieth century around its own production plants, first for fruit and vegetables and then for tobacco, and the factory at its centre belonged to the SAIM consortium, which ran the whole tobacco cycle of the Piana del Sele from the 1920s to the 1970s. The plant closed with that industry. It has since been restored, taken into public hands and reopened under the name NEXT — Nuova Esposizione Ex Tabacchificio — as an exhibition centre. It is now the seat of the Mediterranean Exchange of Archaeological Tourism, the trade fair that fills the halls each autumn, and that booking puts a working cultural function back inside a disused factory.
Key facts
- Official name: NEXT – Nuova Esposizione Ex Tabacchificio (New Exhibition, Former Tobacco Factory)
- Built: early twentieth century, as part of the SAIM tobacco network of the Piana del Sele
- Original use: tobacco processing; the workforce was overwhelmingly female, the tabacchine
- Wartime use: after the Allied landings of the Second World War, headquarters of Commander Clark and later a military hospital
- Present use: publicly owned exhibition and conference centre; permanent and temporary displays on local production
- Setting: Borgo Cafasso, about two kilometres north of the Paestum archaeological park (UNESCO World Heritage, inscribed 1998)
- Part of: the network of former tobacco factories of the Piana del Sele, with Battipaglia, Eboli, Altavilla Silentina and Pontecagnano
History
The Piana del Sele is a belt of reclaimed dune land behind the Tyrrhenian coast, unusually fertile and ecologically delicate. Farms came first, then villages around the farms. When industry arrived in the early twentieth century the same pattern repeated at a larger scale: a processing plant went up, and a village formed around it. Borgo Cafasso is one of those villages, and its factory is one of six that the SAIM consortium operated across the plain — Farina at Battipaglia, Fiocche at Eboli, Carillia at Altavilla Silentina, Centola and Farinia at Pontecagnano, and Cafasso here. They share a technology and a building type, and the Fondo Ambiente Italiano treats them as a single complex rather than as scattered ruins.
Tobacco work was women’s work. The tabacchine sorted, graded and strung the leaf, and they were the real workforce of the plant; the social history of the village is largely theirs. That history has a sharp interruption. After the Allied landings of September 1943 the complex was requisitioned: it served as Commander Clark’s headquarters and then as a military hospital, which is why a tobacco shed on the Sele plain appears in the record of the Italian campaign.
Production wound down with the consortium. What saved the building was an argument about what it was. More than twenty years ago a study begun as a thesis by the architect Fausto Martino, developed with the regional heritage authority, proposed treating the shed not as an obsolete plant but as industrial archaeology, and converting it into an exhibition centre for local production chains. Gillo Dorfles, one of the most attentive critical eyes of the Italian twentieth century, had already named it the symbol of the Piana del Sele. The restoration followed that reading, and the building is now public.
What you see
The main shed is long, low and deliberately plain: load-bearing masonry in warm ochre brick, a regular file of tall arched windows down each flank, and a single modest doorway at the centre of the long side where you would expect a factory gate. The proportions are agricultural rather than monumental. Nothing on the façade advertises what was made inside, which is normal for a plant built to dry and store a crop: what mattered was volume, cross-ventilation and even light, and the window rhythm is the structure doing that job.
The restoration left that legibility alone and admitted its own date. The new roof is a corrugated metal sheet in deep red, laid over the original pitch and visible from a long way off across flat fields; it is clearly an addition, not a reconstruction. Around the building the ground has been cleared and turfed, with the Salerno–Reggio railway running close along one side and the mountains of the Cilento closing the horizon behind. The second, smaller block beside the main shed belongs to the same complex and keeps the same vocabulary.
Practical information
- Access: the complex is publicly owned and open for its programme of exhibitions, fairs and conferences; there is no permanent museum ticket, and opening depends on what is on.
- Main event: the Mediterranean Exchange of Archaeological Tourism, held here in late autumn, with free admission.
- Time needed: half an hour for the building itself; a half day if you combine it with the archaeological park.
- Photography: the long façade reads best in raking afternoon light; the full extent of the complex only resolves from above or from the approach road.
- Before travelling: check the current programme, since the halls are closed between events.
Getting there
The site is at Via Cafasso 21, in the hamlet of Cafasso–Borgo Nuovo, about two kilometres north of the Paestum excavations and some forty kilometres south of Salerno. Trains on the Salerno–Paestum–Sapri line stop at Paestum station, within walking distance of the archaeological area and a short taxi ride from the factory; the A2 motorway leaves at Battipaglia. Most visitors come by car, and parking is on site. The approach from the south crosses open farmland, which is the view the building was designed against.
Nearby
- Paestum archaeological park — the three Greek temples and the Tomb of the Diver, UNESCO World Heritage since 1998, two kilometres south.
- Capaccio Paestum — the modern comune and its hill town, with the sanctuary of the Madonna del Granato above the plain.
- The other SAIM factories — Battipaglia, Eboli, Altavilla Silentina and Pontecagnano, which together form the industrial landscape this building belongs to.
- Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park — the protected landscape that shares the Paestum UNESCO inscription.
Sources
- Italia.it (ENIT, Italian National Tourist Board), NEXT – New Exhibition Former SAIM Tobacco Factory, Cafasso Village — official description, address and coordinates.
- Fondo Ambiente Italiano, La rete degli ex tabacchifici della Piana del Sele — the SAIM consortium, the six plants and their shared building type.
- Borsa Mediterranea del Turismo Archeologico, La BMTA nella prestigiosa location del Next ex Tabacchificio — the restoration proposal, the wartime use and the building’s present function.
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