Italy - Cilento Coast - Campania Region
Greek and Roma Sites Visited by Virgil, Cicero and Goethe.
Oct 27, 2007
Less known than its closest big city, Naples, the Cilento coast is a,fairly remote part of the Campania region. It is a beautfiful unspoilt area and a good base for exploring other parts of southern Italy.
Italy - Cilento Coast - Historic villages
On the map of Italy, Cilento is where the buckle of the boot would be, if there were one. It is a region of woods thick with olives and chestnuts, small villages fringing on the Mediterranean, the smell of wild herbs and jasmine mixing with the smell of the sea.
There are are medieval hill-top villages like Castellabate and golden beaches plus a wonderfully robust cuisine. This is where the flat bread ‘focaccia’ comes from, along with hearty meat sauces made from mutton and goat.
Cilento Coast - Goethe was here
Goethe travelled through Cilento, then a land of swamps and the uncontested territory of wild buffalo brought to the region centuries ago, possibly by the Romans. Today the buffalo are still here and their milk is used to make the best mozzarella in Italy.
The Cilento area is a good base for those who look for places less trodden, yet within easy reach of places offering a whiff of the wider world of tourism, like Naples and Salerno.
Cilento Coast - Paestum
One of the biggest draws in the region is the ancient site of Paestum, founded by the Greeks in the sixth century BC and colonized by the Romans in 273 BC. There are three fabulous golden-stone temples which look hardly touched by time. This was the first important city of the Greek period.
Paestum survived the centuries because of the unpredictability of nature. Around the 5th century AD the city was abandoned because of severe flooding and it became a mosquito-ridden swamp. Malaria decimated the population and by the 9th century the city was abandoned and gradually was taken over by thick forest.
It seems incredible that it took about nine hundred years for its glory to be revealed when a road was built through the area. It probably would not have survived the centuries had it not been for the preservative qualities of the swamp that covered it for so long. It is now classified as a World Heritage Site.
Cilento Coast - Velia
Velia Veliais an ancient Greek town in Cilento which also fits the ‘national treasure’ description. Called Helea when it was founded by the Greeks around 540 BC, this was home to the great philosophers,Virgil and Cicero, and Velia is mentioned in their works. Under the Romans its name was changed to Velia. Today the excavated town is laid out on the side of a hill scented with herbs.
Cicero loved the thermal baths at Velia. The Romans liked them too and and some of them can still be seen, with many of their beautiful tiles intact. There is also a medieval tower, impressive ruins, and a perfectly preserved arched gate from the 6th century BC, through which you reach the Rose Gate Road, a stone-cobbled path which leads you away from the ancient world into the modern. As you walk on these ancient stones you can feel the same air that Cicero felt and smell the same flowers, sniff wild herbs, and pass swathes of wild corn dotted with scarlet poppies.
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