Volturnum became a Roman colony in 194 BC and, in 95 AD, it was reached by the Via Domitiana, and received a large bridge connecting the two shores of the river with the same name.

The town decayed after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and, in 806, the Lombard Prince of Benevento Grimoald III gave its port to the abbots of Montecassino.

Castel Volturno received a boost in its agricultural activities after the nearby lands were dried during the Fascist government, and after the new Domiziana Road and a new bridge were built (1954).

In addition to regular garbage, toxic waste leeching from unregulated landfills in the vicinity, also from the Camorra, has contaminated the beach and forced a near complete prohibition on entering the water in places.

[citation needed] However, a 2017 New York Times article on the project more sympathetically reports: "When Villaggio Coppola was built in the 1960s... the aspiration was of a utopian residential area.

While the origins of this project have not been well documented, the buildings remain in use to the present day, and can now be seen as a profound ongoing architectural statement, evolving and decaying outside of the influence of normal market forces.

The Villaggio Coppola was used as the principle setting of the 2018 film Dogman, where it serves as an eerie interstitial microcosm and earns a credit for "il Patrocinio Morale", or 'morale guidance'.

In contrast, claimed a television reportage of Spiegel TV, citing the Italian journalist Sergio Nazarro, that the development of African crime clans on the model of the Camorra first used in Italy.