Capital of Campania's southernmost province, SALERNO has much of the scruffy, disorganized charm of Naples: a busy, dirty port city that's well off most travellers' itineraries and so holds a good supply of cheap accommodation - making it a good base for both the Amalfi coast and the ancient site of Paestum further south. During medieval times the town's medical school was the most eminent in Europe. More recently, it was the site of the Allied landing of September 9, 1943 - a landing that reduced much of the centre to rubble. The subsequent rebuilding has restored neither charm nor efficiency to the town centre, which is an odd mixture of wide, rather characterless boulevards and a small medieval core full of intriguingly dark corners and alleys. But the town's siting, strung along the top of its gulf and looking across to the sheer wall of the Amalfi coast, is fine.