First published: 08/12/18.

Clyde 3.0

Cilento And Vallo Di Diano

Cilento and Vallo di Diano (Inscribed)

Cilento and Vallo di Diano by Clyde

I visited this WHS in November 2018 staying overnight in Paestum. The long opening hours even in Autumn mean that you can time your visit in a way that it gets dark by the time you exit the archaeological site of Paestum and the three main temples are lit up (top left and bottom right photos). You can also revisit on the same day if you stay overnight and if you love buffalo mozzarella cheese and mozzarella in general you'll have a feast when in the area.

The Greek temples of Paestum are really striking in size and detail and are comparable to the inscribed ones of Agrigento are other ones in Sicily (Segesta or Selinunte). Unlike, Agrigento you can still walk 'inside' the roofless temples to get a closer look at the architecture. It's incredible that these ancient buildings stand tall and mighty while the rest of the 20th century towns and cities nearby are mostly crumbling!

Apart from the largest and most impressive structures - the Temple of Neptune, the Basilica and the Temple of Ceres - there are other interesting things to see such as the heroon, the ekklesiasterion, the amphitheatre and also the high city walls which are one of the best preserved defensive walls in Magna Graecia.

The museum is really worth visiting and included with the entrance ticket. Just in front of it is a white marble UNESCO plaque on the Paestum part of this WHS which is quite easy to miss. Inside, among the rich finds from the archaeological site, the highlight is definitely the Tomb of the Diver (top right and bottom left photos) which in a way reminded me of the similarly colourful Etruscan tombs of Tarquinia. Other interesting artefacts worth mentioning are the stone metopes, the painted amphorae and the colourful painted terracotta features from the temples.

If you have more time to spend, you can also buy the combined ticket to visit the Velia archaeological site, mostly for its interesting mosaics where there is another UNESCO plaque for this site and drive further south to the monastery of Padula, where there is another UNESCO plaque for Cilento (at Castellabate). I think that these other locations add nothing to the inscription of the outstanding Paestum and are quite confusing as a far-fetched attempt to portray the continuous cultural landscape of Cilento and Vallo di Diano. 

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