Il Parco Nazionale del Cilento and Vallo di Diano, including the archaeological site of Paestum and Velia, and the Charterhouse of Padula

The Parco Nazionale del Cilento and Vallo di Diano was included in Unesco’s MAB Programme in 1997 as a “biosphere reserve”. Unesco’s MAB Biosphere Reserves is a network that aims at protecting natural habitats and biodiversity, and at promoting a harmonious, sustainable development between nature and culture, that is, between man and his environment. The area of the Park covers 181,000 hectares and is home to a very diverse landscape, from the sandy or steep coasts between the Gulf of Salerno and the Gulf of Policastro to the mostly hilly inland with the Alburni mountains, rising as high as 1700 metres asl. The highest mountains are Mount Cervati (1.898 m) and Mount Alburno (1.742 m). The Vallo di Diano is a plateau approximately 500 metres above sea level, a typical Apennine depression with extremely fertile soil, where in the old times, in the Pleistocene, there was a lake that has now completely disappeared. The region is covered in karst soil that has produced the many caves that can be found both in the hilly, harsh inland and in the coastline between Palinuro and Scario, dolines, sinkholes, canyons with streams partly flowing in underground tunnels. Pine, holly oak and chestnut woods alternate with large expanses of scrubland. The local biodiversity includes rare, endemic species. The most distinctive animals are the otters living in the streams, wildcats in the scrubland, peregrine falcons along the seacoasts, golden eagles and wolves populating the woodier mountain areas. Olive trees and vines were introduced by the Benedictine monks in the Middle Ages, thus starting centuries-old rural traditions that are in perfect harmony with the environment. Listed as one of UNESCO Global Geo-Parks since 2010.

Nowadays, the Site is home to 8 mountain communities and 80 municipalities over nearly 200,000 hectares. Humans have been living there for 250,000 years, since the first human traces date back to the settlement of the first farming communities in the Palaeolithic age. Contacts were made with the Mycenaean world in the Bronze and Iron Ages; the first Greek colonies arrived in the VIII century BC, first in Ischia and Cumae. Extremely interesting is the archaic network of routes that had grown on the local orographic features since the proto-historical age and that eventually enabled the Magna Graecian and Lucanian settlements, between the Tyrrhenian coast and the Apennine inland, to get in touch. While in the Roman age, the Vallo di Diano was preferred over the routes across the ridges, the mountain routes began to be reused in the Middle Ages, so some centres settled there and became a distinctive feature of the Cilento landscape.

Cilento encompasses some of the most valuable, unique vestiges of Magna Graecia, because several colonisers landed on its coasts. Two archaeological sites date back to Greek times, with Roman, Early Christian and Medieval layers built on top of them over the centuries.

The Magna Graecian world of Poseidon, Paestum in Latin, credits Poseidon, God of the Sea, for the magnificence of the ancient sacred urban settlement, which is still home to some outstanding Doric temples. The colony was founded by Sybarites, who did not come by sea but through ancestral routes across the ridges. The polis was all intent on trading, had tight relationships with the Etruscans, and made its population very wealthy. Poseidon was conquered by the Lucanians in the IV century; after its alliance with Pyrrhus against the Romans, it was conquered by the latter and became a Roman colony in 273 BC.

Velia, Elea in Greek, was built in 540 BC, when an expedition of Phocaean colonisers, exiled after the Persians’ occupation of their city, Phocaea, now in Turkey, landed on the Tyrrhenian coast of Lucania and founded one of the most advanced cities in the ancient Mediterranean world. The city rose on a promontory overlooking the sea, where the acropolis was placed. It was a Roman municipium and was party destroyed by the Saracens. Later on, the lower part of the city was abandoned, while the higher part was inhabited until the 17^th century. In the acropolis, the oldest area (VI century BC), one can visit the remains of an Ionic temple, a III-century theatre, the IV-III century agora with an Angevin tower rising next to it. In the Hellenistic and Imperial areas, one can visit Hadrian’s Baths (II century AD). A Pre-Socratic philosophic school developed in Elea, the Eleatic school. The school was in full swing in the V century BC and left a deep mark on atomism, sophism, the Socratic school, Plato and Aristotle.

In the Middle Ages, the landscape of Cilento was dotted with towers, castles, parish churches and monasteries, preferably standing on high places and connecting the valleys with the mountain areas. They included the monumental Charterhouse of San Lorenzo a Padula, which began to be built by Tommaso Sanseverino in 1306. It was finished in the XVIII century. The Charterhouse stands on top of a hill with scenic views of the Vallo di Diano. The layout of the building looks like a gridiron, celebrating the martyrdom of the saint the monumental complex is dedicated to. The Charterhouse of Padula is one of the largest monasteries in the world, has the world’s largest cloister, surrounded by 84 pillars, and stands on about 52,000 square metres. It was listed as a national monument in 1882. The Charterhouse houses the local archaeological museum, Museo Archeologico Provinciale della Lucania Occidentale.

Special projects for the protection and reintroduction of threatened animal species are being carried out in the Parco Nazionale del Cilento and Vallo di Diano. The Capovaccaio (Neophron percnopterus Linnaeus) is a European vulture that now lives in very few areas of Southern Italy, in a very small number of specimens. It is a diurnal bird of prey that feeds on carcasses or small live preys, such as rodents, snakes or other birds. The Wolf is one of the endangered species that find their favourite habitat, i.e. the forest, in the Park. The Otter, with Italy’s highest number of specimens, can be considered the symbol of the Park’s wildlife.

Both in the inland and on the coasts of the Parco Nazionale del Cilento and Vallo di Diano, the karst nature of the soil created a very high number of caves, nearly 400 of them. The features and beauty of such geological structures are the reasons why Cilento was included in the list of European Geo-Parks in 2010, for its scientific, cultural, archaeological and educational relevance. The most noteworthy coastal caves are Grotta Azzurra and Grotta delle Ossa near Salerno; the Caves of Castelcivita are a 5km wide speleological site.

In Paestum, the Temple of Ceres, which was in fact dedicated to Athena, dates back to the VI century BC and is made of local limestone; it was converted into a church in the Byzantine age and is in the northern Sanctuary. The area of the southern Sanctuary is a wide showcase of ruins, such as the Sanctuary of Asklepeion and several smaller, temple-like buildings used in the Roman age. The Temple of Neptune (470 BC) is the best preserved and most spectacular one, and, though it was thought to be consecrated to Poseidon, more recent studies associate it with the worship of Apollo or Zeus. The Basilica or Temple of Hera is the oldest one (550 – 540 BC) and has nine pillars on the fronts and 18 pillars on the longer sides. Where the agora used to be, there are now the remains of the Ekklesiasterion, where the citizens used to meet, a place that the Romans then filled up and obliterated. The city Walls were nearly five kilometres long and were made of limestone blocks, rising seven metres above ground. The Archaeological Museum of Paestum guards five famous painted slabs from the necropolis of Paestum, known as the Tomb of the Diver; it is the only extant evidence of classic Greek painting and portrays a young man diving into the water, a symbol of the transition from life to death, and scenes of a banquet and a funeral cortege. The slabs date from 480-470 BC. In the mid-IV century BC, the artists Assteas and Python worked in Paestum, standing out for their distinctive style of pottery, with special compositive and decorative features that created an extremely valuable, precious Paestan pottery school.

The ancient Elea saw the flourishing of a Pre-Socratic philosophical school, the Eleatic school. Parmenides was the founder and Zeno (late VI century BC – early V century BC) was his disciple and friend. Both born in Elea, they are regarded as two of the greatest Greek philosophers. The Eleatic school stands out for the doctrine of the unity of Being, “what is”, which defines what being is, what its essential properties are, and how man can learn the truths of the world through rational knowledge alone. Zeno is known for his logical paradoxes, with which he proved the Being, through reductio ad absurdum, to be single, unchangeable and indivisible.

The first regular archaeological excavations began in the 1920s, but the most important discoveries only happened in the Sixties. In 1961, the Fine Arts Superintendent, Mario Napoli, started to excavate a wider area and found the Pink Door and its monumental road, while also completing the excavations of the Hellenistic baths. Dating back to 350 BC, the Pink Door is regarded as the oldest specimen of a round arch in Greek architecture. The arch is set into a sandstone viaduct that used to connect two elevations of the acropolis.

The Primrose of Palinuro is the symbol of the Park. Its typical golden yellow flowers bloom in spring and decorate the coasts and cliffs of Cilento. It is a protected, engendered species of the Primulaceae. It has a distinctive appearance, with a thick rosette of soft, fleshy leaves growing out of the rhizome, with the flower standing up at the end of a 15-20cm scape. It prefers north-facing rocky soil, which it deeply roots into.

Parmenides (Elea, 515-510 BC – death unknown)

A Greek philosopher of aristocratic decent. In his city, Elea, he held the highest office of the polis, helping write its laws – so that he might have come into contact with Pericles, the great Athens-born legislator. His work, of which just a few fragments remain, is the poem On Nature (circa 468 BC), which had a deep influence on both Plato and Aristotle, who admitted that they could not have dealt with metaphysics or physics without Parmenides’s teachings. His doctrine reflects the influence of Pythagoreanism and he seems to have lived to an old age, universally honoured as a wise man. His disciples include Zeno and Melissus of Samos.

Tommaso II Sanseverino (1255 AD – 1324)

The Lord of Marsico and Vallo di Diano. He was the Baron of Cilento. Tommaso II was a member of one of the noblest Italian families associated with the Kingdom of Naples, which included viceroys, cardinals and Condottieri related to European Royalty and noble families of the Italian peninsula. Owner of vast estates, Tommaso II founded the Charterhouse of Padula (1306), which he eventually donated to the Carthusian monks. His sarcophagus is in a chapel of honour, in the Carthusian Cemetery of Naples.

► “La città [Elea] della bellezza nella quale la ragione dà ordine alle cose”

Anassagora

 

► “Finalmente, incerti, se camminavamo su rocce o su macerie, potemmo riconoscere alcuni massi oblunghi e squadrati, che avevamo già notato da distante, come templi sopravvissuti e memorie di una città [Paestum, n.d.r.] una volta magnifica.”

Goethe, Viaggio in Italia

 

The archaeological sites of Paestum and Velia follow the same theme of the Italian World Heritage Sites that remain from the Magna Graecian civilisation. The Valley of the Temples in Agrigento and the archaeological area of Siracusa provide a wide overview of monumental remains from the colonial age, in their contaminations with the local customs.

The seven cities of Val di Noto, in Sicily, are considered to be outstanding specimens of Italian Late Baroque and showcase its stylistic features. The Charterhouse of Padula was built over different centuries but it looks distinctively Baroque in its decorations and in many of its architectural features, such as the library staircase and the large refectory with its opulent inlaid marble floor.

M. Macale, Parco del Cilento, Paestum, Velia, Certosa di Padula, Libreria dello Stato, Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Roma, 2007

Archeologia nel Mediterraneo: i percorsi d’Italia dal passato al futuro, Paestum 17 – 20 novembre 2005, Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, 2005

Alla ricerca di Eracle nel museo di Paestum, testi di T. Rocco; illustrazioni di M.C.Costa, Ingegneria per la cultura, Roma, 2000

Il Parco nazionale del Cilento e Vallo di Diano: la rete MAB nel Mediterraneo, a cura di F. Lucarelli, Studio Idea Editrice, 1999

Velia, citta greca, a c. di A. Abenante, Ed. Intra Moenia, Napoli, 1996

Velia. Studi e ricerche, a c. di G. Greco, F. Krinzinger, Panini, Modena, 1994

La Certosa ritrovata : Padula, Certosa di San Lorenzo, De Luca, Roma, 1988

M. De Cunzo, V. De Martini, La Certosa di Padula, Firenze, Centro Di, 1985

La zona archeologica, i templi, il Museo [Paestum], L. Rota, C.A. Fiammenghi, Federico Garolla, Milano, 1984

A. Aloia, A. De Vita, M.P. Postano, Cilento and Vallo di Diano Geopark: Elea-Velia an UNESCO geoarcheological site, European Geoparks Magazine, Issue 9, published by Natural History Museum of the Lesvos on behalf of the European Geoparks Network, 2012.

whc.unesco.org/en/list/842

www.unesco.beniculturali.it

www.museopaestum.beniculturali.it

www.cilentoediano.it/

www.parks.it/parco.nazionale.cilento/

www.archeosa.beniculturali.it/

The Parco Nazionale del Cilento and Vallo di Diano was included in Unesco’s MAB Programme in 1997 as a “biosphere reserve”. Unesco’s MAB Biosphere Reserves is a network that aims at protecting natural habitats and biodiversity, and at promoting a harmonious, sustainable development between nature and culture, that is, between man and his environment. The area of the Park covers 181,000 hectares and is home to a very diverse landscape, from the sandy or steep coasts between the Gulf of Salerno and the Gulf of Policastro to the mostly hilly inland with the Alburni mountains, rising as high as 1700 metres asl. The highest mountains are Mount Cervati (1.898 m) and Mount Alburno (1.742 m). The Vallo di Diano is a plateau approximately 500 metres above sea level, a typical Apennine depression with extremely fertile soil, where in the old times, in the Pleistocene, there was a lake that has now completely disappeared. The region is covered in karst soil that has produced the many caves that can be found both in the hilly, harsh inland and in the coastline between Palinuro and Scario, dolines, sinkholes, canyons with streams partly flowing under buried tunnels. Pine, holly oak and chestnut woods alternate with large expanses of scrubland. The local biodiversity includes rare, endemic species. The most distinctive animals are the otters living in the streams, wildcats in the scrubland, peregrine falcons along the seacoasts, golden eagles and wolves populating the woodier mountain areas. Olive trees and vines were introduced by the Benedictine monks in the Middle Ages.

Humans have been living there for 250,000 years, since the first human traces date back to the settlement of the first farming communities in the Palaeolithic age. Contacts were made with the Mycenaean world in the Bronze and Iron Ages; the first Greek colonies arrived in the VIII century BC, first in Ischia and Cumae. Extremely interesting is the archaic network of routes that had grown on the local orographic features since the proto-historical age and that eventually enabled the Magna Graecian and Lucanian settlements, between the Tyrrhenian coast and the Apennine inland, to get in touch. In the Roman and Medieval ages, people moved through the old mountain routes, leaving behind the settlements and crops that now dot the Cilento landscape.

Cilento encompasses some of the most valuable, unique vestiges of Magna Graecia, because several colonisers landed on its coasts. Two archaeological sites date back to Greek times, with Roman, Early Christian and Medieval layers built on top of them over the centuries.

The Magna Graecian world of Poseidon, Paestum in Latin, credits Poseidon, God of the Sea, for the magnificence of the ancient sacred urban settlement, which is still home to some outstanding Doric temples. The colony was founded by Sybarites, who did not come by sea but through ancestral routes across the ridges. The polis was all intent on trading, had tight relationships with the Etruscans, and made its population very wealthy. Poseidon was conquered by the Lucanians in the IV century; after its alliance with Pyrrhus against the Romans, it was conquered by the latter and became a Roman colony in 273 BC.

Velia, Elea in Greek, was built in 540 BC, when an expedition of Phocaean colonisers, exiled after the Persians’ occupation of their city, Phocaea, now in Turkey, landed on the Tyrrhenian coast of Lucania and founded one of the most advanced cities in the ancient Mediterranean world. The city rose on a promontory overlooking the sea, where the acropolis was placed. It was a Roman municipium and was party destroyed by the Saracens. Later on, the lower part of the city was abandoned, while the higher part was inhabited until the 17^th century. In the acropolis, the oldest area (VI century BC), one can visit the remains of an Ionic temple, a III-century theatre, and Hadrian’s Baths (II century AD).

In the Middle Ages, the landscape of Cilento was dotted with towers, castles, parish churches and monasteries, preferably standing on high places and connecting the valleys with the mountain areas. They included the monumental Charterhouse of San Lorenzo a Padula, which began to be built by Tommaso Sanseverino in 1306. It was finished in the XVIII century. The Charterhouse stands on top of a hill with scenic views of the Vallo di Diano. The Charterhouse of Padula is one of the largest monasteries in Italy, listed as a national monument in 1882. The Charterhouse houses the local archaeological museum, Museo Archeologico Provinciale della Lucania Occidentale.

Special projects for the protection of threatened animal species are being carried out in the Parco Nazionale del Cilento and Vallo di Diano: The Capovaccaio (Neophron percnopterus Linnaeus) is a European vulture that now lives in very few areas of Southern Italy, in a very small number of specimens. It is a diurnal bird of prey that feeds on carcasses or small live preys, such as rodents, snakes or other birds. The Wolf is one of the endangered species that find their favourite habitat, i.e. the forest, in the Park. The Otter, with Italy’s highest number of specimens, can be considered the symbol of the Park’s wildlife.

Both in the inland and on the coasts of the Parco Nazionale del Cilento and Vallo di Diano, the karst nature of the soil created a very high number of caves, nearly 400 of them. The features and beauty of such geological structures are the reasons why Cilento was included in the list of European Geo-Parks in 2010, for its scientific, cultural, archaeological and educational relevance.

In Paestum, the Temple of Ceres, which was in fact dedicated to Athena, dates back to the VI century BC; The Temple of Neptune (470 BC) is the best preserved and most spectacular one, and, though it was thought to be consecrated to Poseidon, more recent studies associate it with the worship of Apollo or Zeus; The Basilica or Temple of Hera, dedicated to Zeus’s wife, is the oldest one (550 – 540 BC) in the area. The city Walls were nearly five kilometres long and were made of limestone blocks, rising seven metres above ground. The Archaeological Museum of Paestum guards five famous painted slabs from the necropolis of Paestum, known as the Tomb of the Diver; it is the only extant evidence of classic Greek painting and portrays a young man diving into the water, a symbol of the transition from life to death, and scenes of a banquet and a funeral cortege. The slabs date from 480-470 BC.

The ancient Elea saw the flourishing of a Pre-Socratic philosophical school, the Eleatic school. Parmenides was the founder and Zeno (late VI century BC – early V century BC) was his disciple and friend. Both born in Elea, they are regarded as two of the greatest Greek philosophers. The Eleatic school stands out for the doctrine of the unity of Being, “what is”, which defines what being is, what its essential properties are, and how man can learn the truths of the world through rational knowledge alone. Zeno is known for his logical paradoxes, with which he proved the Being, through reductio ad absurdum, to be single, unchangeable and indivisible.

In 1961, the Fine Arts Superintendent, Mario Napoli, started to excavate a wider area and found the Pink Door and its monumental road dates back to the IV century BC and is regarded as the oldest specimen of a round arch in Greek architecture.

Parmenides (515-510 BC)

A Greek philosopher of aristocratic decent. In his city, Elea, he held the highest office of the polis, helping write its laws – so that he might have come into contact with Pericles, the great Athens-born legislator. His work, of which just a few fragments remain, is the poem On Nature (circa 468 BC), which had a deep influence on both Plato and Aristotle, who admitted that they could not have dealt with metaphysics or physics without Parmenides’s teachings. His doctrine reflects the influence of Pythagoreanism and he seems to have lived to an old age, universally honoured as a wise man. His disciples include Zeno and Melissus of Samos.

Tommaso II Sanseverino (1255 a.C – 1324)

The Lord of Marsico and Vallo di Diano. He was the Baron of Cilento. Tommaso II was a member of one of the noblest Italian families associated with the Kingdom of Naples, which included viceroys, cardinals and Condottieri related to European Royalty and noble families of the Italian peninsula. Owner of vast estates, Tommaso II founded the Charterhouse of Padula (1306), which he eventually donated to the Carthusian monks. His sarcophagus is in a chapel of honour, in the Carthusian Cemetery of Naples.

The archaeological sites of Paestum and Velia follow the same theme of the Italian World Heritage Sites that remain from the Magna Graecian civilisation. The Valley of the Temples in Agrigento and the archaeological area of Siracusa provide a wide overview of monumental remains from the colonial age, in their contaminations with the local customs.

The seven cities of Val di Noto, in Sicily, are considered to be outstanding specimens of Italian Late Baroque and showcase its stylistic features. The Charterhouse of Padula was built over different centuries but it looks distinctively Baroque in its decorations and in many of its architectural features, such as the library staircase and the large refectory with its opulent inlaid marble floor.

Biosphere, noun. It means the whole of the parts of the Earth that have suitable conditions for wildlife to live in. In a broad sense, it can stand for the all forms of life living on Earth.

Acropolis, noun, the sacred and highest part of a city – àkros, ‘high’ and pòlis, ‘city’. In Greek cities, the acropolis was often fortified and the most important holy buildings were located there.

Scape, noun, a botanical term indicating the leafless stem, or stalk, that holds the flower. Examples of a scape as long as that of the Primrose of Palinuro are the snowdrop, the cyclamen and the wild garlic.

Karst, noun. An area that resembles the Karst region (Carso), the limestone plateau in North-Eastern Italy. ‘Karst’ rocks are easily soluble limestone rocks that are exposed to weathering and erosion. So, in karst areas water forms cracks, dolines, caves and underground tunnels.

Reductio ad absurdum, a phrase that means a form of logical argument in which a premise is logically followed to a contradictory, absurd conclusion. Such conclusion is found to be false and proves that the premise was false too: so, this proves that the opposite was true.

Holly oak, noun, a tree native to the Mediterranean region.

Pòlis, noun, an ancient Greek ‘city-state’.