The Cilento National Park

Located 75 minutes south of the famous Amalfi Coast, the Cilento National Park is a protected area comprised of small rural towns and seaside villages. Designated as a "World Heritage Site" by the United Nations, "il Cilento" is home to an incredible array of natural wonders and historical sites.

The Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park is the second largest park in Italy. It stretches from the Tyrrhenian coast to the foot of the Apennines in Campania and Basilicata, and it includes the peaks of the Alburni Mountains, of the Cervati and of the Gelbison and the coastal buttresses of Mount Bulgheria and Mount Stella.  The extraordinary naturalist complexity of the heterogeneous territory goes hand in hand with the mythical and mysterious character of a land rich in history and culture: from the call of nymph Leucosia to the beaches where Palinuro left Aeneas, from the ruins of the Greek colonies of Elea and Paestum to the wonderful Certosa Monastery at Padula.

Brief description by UNESCO: The Cilento area is a cultural landscape of exceptional quality. Dramatic chains of sanctuaries and settlements along its three east-west mountain ridges vividly portray the historical evolution of the area as a major route for trade and for cultural and political interaction during the prehistoric and medieval periods. It was also the boundary between the Greek colonies of Magna Grecia and the indigenous Etruscan and Lucanian peoples, and so preserves the remains of two very important classical cities, Paestum and Velia.