The Janare of Benevento: Witches and the Walnut Tree

Benevento · Campania

The tradition and its place

Benevento is closely linked in Italian storytelling with the janare, nocturnal witches, and with a legendary walnut tree where they were said to gather. The stories have travelled through books, oral retellings and tourist imagery. Their recurring landscape makes Benevento a place of imagined meetings at the edge of ordinary civic life.

Reading the evidence

A legendary gathering is not evidence that the described witches existed or that a given tree marked a real sabbath. Separate the tale’s sources and later reinventions from documented history. The term can carry memories of fear of women who lived outside accepted norms, as well as pleasure in retelling an uncanny local story.

Another angle

The walnut tree is a narrative landmark even when no single surviving tree can bear the weight of every version. Follow the tale through literary retellings as well as local voices. A good city legend tells us something about the people who kept reshaping it.