A gist for running TYPO3 on NGINX. Taken and slightly modified from http://www.howtoforge.de/anleitung/installation-von-typo3-4-6-auf-nginx-lemp-unter-debian-squeezeubuntu-11-10/

site1.conf

# File: /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/site1.conf
# Could be easy duplicated for several installations
# F.e. /home/cziel/src/project1;
# ...  /home/cziel/src/project2;

# Minimum requirements like this:
server {
        root /home/cziel/src/site1;

        # Tweak your /etc/hosts
        server_name site1.local;

        # get the actual config from above
	include /etc/nginx/typo3;
}

typo3

# file: /etc/nginx/typo3


index index.php index.html;

location = /favicon.ico {
  log_not_found off;
  access_log off;
  expires max;
}

location = /robots.txt {
  allow all;
  log_not_found off;
  access_log off;
}

 # Deny all attempts to access hidden files such as .htaccess, .htpasswd, .DS_Store (Mac).
# location ~ /. {
# deny all;
# access_log off;
# log_not_found off;
# }

location ~* .(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|css|js|ico)$ {
  expires max;
  log_not_found off;
}

location ~* .(cur|ico|gif|png|jpe?g|css|js|swf|woff)$ {
  expires max;
  log_not_found off;
}

location ~* ^(/typo3/sysext|/typo3conf/ext).*.(cur|ico|gif|png|jpe?g|css|js|swf|woff) {
  expires max;
  log_not_found off;
}

location = /clear.gif {
 empty_gif;
 expires max;
}

location ^~ /typo3/gfx {
 expires max;
}

location ^~ /typo3temp/compressor {
 expires max;
}
 
location ~* .(sql|htaccess|htpasswd|tpl|html5|xhtml) {
 deny all;
}

location / {
 if ($query_string ~ ".+") {
 return 405;
 }
 # pass requests from logged-in users to PHP
 if ($http_cookie = 'nc_staticfilecache|be_typo_user' ) {
  return 405;
 } # pass POST requests to PHP
 if ($request_method !~ ^(GET|HEAD)$ ) {
  return 405;
 }
 if ($http_pragma = 'no-cache') {
  return 405;
 }
 if ($http_cache_control = 'no-cache') {
  return 405;
 }
 error_page 405 = @nocache;

 # serve requested content from the cache if available, otherwise pass the request to PHP
 try_files /typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache/$host${request_uri}index.html @nocache;
}

location @nocache {
 try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}

location ^~ /typo3temp/tx_ncstaticfilecache {
 expires 43200;
 charset utf-8;
}

location ~ .php$ {
 try_files $uri =404;
 include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
 # See nginx docs for FastSCGI Docs...
 fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
 fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
 fastcgi_index index.php;
}