The original nucleus

            In the middle of the fecund lowland Campana, the Campania Felix of the Romans, a territory of the Liburni (from Leuterni from which Leboria o Liburni) an ancient population similar to the Cimmeri, whose confinements were bordered in the South by the Dukedom of Naples, in the East and North by the Clanio river and in the West by the Tyrrhenian sea, the city of Aversa rose even if recent studies points out it is of Etruscal origin. Its plant appears perfectly inserted in the bill bordered by the I° quintare SDV and by the SDVI and by the II° quintare VKX and VKXI of the pars ultrata of the DM and KM of the ager campanus of the Roman centuriation; the center of the bill was formed by the sacred area of the Cathedral risen on the ancient chapel Sanctu Paulu at Averse.
            For the geographical position as well as for the origin of her toponym Aversa (from a-vers [fire]), setting itself to the borders of the flegrerian area, it would assume the toponym that recalls doubtless also that of Velsu, one of the twelve Etruscan city in Campania not yet localized. A name later corrupted in Verzelus, Versaro (...) then Averse.
           Of the city, that rose probably between the VII and VI sec. a. C., traces were soon lost for the asperity of the insalubrious and marshy place; it revives later, with the chapel of San Paolo, memory of the transit of the Apostle along the Consolar street of Campania on the way to Rome in 63 A. C.

            The Village or Castle that Giovanni Villani will refer in the Cronache. Of the ancient city some belongings of the necropolis in the northern area, near Teverola, some written words, reliefs of animals, earthenware would remain as well as a net of subterranean burrows, some of which still walkable, that connected the varied sacred areas of the city among them.
            Aversa, however, owes the definitive urbanistic order to the Normans, that gathered the pre-existing burghs, or of new formation, in four rings of walls using the existing structures, and creating new one, in a system of fortification that included the primitive area of the palace-fortress and the chapel of San Paolo.