Salerno is a port city southeast of Naples. On the top of Monte Bonadies, the ancient Arechi Castle offers sea views, as well as hosting a museum of ceramics and medieval coins. The city Cathedral stands on the remains of a Roman temple. Its distinctive features are only the Byzantine bronze portals, a Baroque crypt and a marble altar. Medicinal plants have been cultivated in the Minerva terraced garden since the 14th century.

The metropolitan primatial cathedral of Santa Maria degli Angeli, San Matteo and San Gregorio VII is the main Catholic place of worship in the city of Salerno, the mother church of the archdiocese of Salerno-Campagna-Acerno. It has the dignity of a minor basilica. The cathedral was built in Romanesque style in the 11th century and subsequently modified several times, with several baroque additions. The bell tower, of great historical and artistic value, is an important testimony of the Byzantine-Norman fusion of the period. Eight bells are placed on it.

The Minerva garden is located in the heart of the historic center of Salerno, in an area known as "Plaium montis" in the Middle Ages. It is halfway along an ideal path that runs along the axis of the walled and terraced gardens, going up from the Municipal Park, near the Fusandola river, towards the Arechi Castle.

The Castello di Arechi is a medieval castle, located at a height of about 300 meters above sea level, overlooking the city and the Gulf of Salerno. It is said of Arechi because the construction of this fortification is traditionally associated with the Lombard Duke Arechi II.

The Trieste waterfront of Salerno is a large tree-lined garden that runs along the Tyrrhenian sea in the central part of the urban nucleus, from Piazza della Libertà to the tourist harbor.

The municipal Villa of Salerno is the "garden" of the city. It was designed in 1870 at the entrance of the city descending from Vietri sul Mare. There is the famous Tullio Fountain.

The medieval aqueduct of Salerno was built in the 9th century to supply the monastery of San Benedetto with water, near the eastern walls. It is located in the historic center of Salerno, under the Bonadies hill and its Arechi castle.

The Mercatello park is a public park located in the Mercatello district, on the eastern outskirts of Salerno.

Salerno is an Italian town of 132 507 inhabitants, the capital of the province of the same name in Campania, the second largest municipality in the region by population and twenty-ninth nationwide.

During the Middle Ages, the city experienced, under the Lombard domination, one of the most important historical phases, having been the capital of the Principality of Salerno, a territory that gradually came to include much of the Italian continental Mezzogiorno.

The Salerno Medical School was located in Salerno, which was the first and most important medical institution in Europe at the beginning of the Middle Ages and as such is considered by many to be a forerunner of modern universities.
Since 1968 the city has been the seat of the University of Salerno, located since 1988, in the form of a campus, in the nearby municipalities of Fisciano and Baronissi.

From February to August 1944 Salerno was the seat of the Italian government, hosting the Badoglio I, Badoglio II and Bonomi II governments which led to the Svolta di Salerno.

The city rises on the homonymous gulf of the Tyrrhenian Sea, between the Amalfi coast (to the west) and the Sele plain (to the south east), at the point where the Irno valley opens towards the sea.

From the orographic point of view the municipal territory is very varied, in fact it goes from sea level up to 953 meters of Monte Stella. The inhabited area develops along the coast and extends inland to the hills behind.

The city is crossed by the river Irno, which until the middle of the last century marked its eastern border and from which its name probably derives. Another stream that flows in the municipal area is the Picentino river, which separates the city itself from the neighboring Pontecagnano Faiano to the east of Salerno. In the city there is also a small lake, Lake Brignano ("O fuoss ra cret" in the vernacular of Salerno).