The Cilento

The Cilento begins south of Salerno and does not stop: it is the second largest national park in Italy and holds a hundred and eighty kilometres of coast, two mountain ranges and eighty municipalities. It is also the only part of Campania where traffic is not a subject, and after a week on the bay that shows.

The coast

From Agropoli southwards the coast alternates long beaches with rocky headlands. There are three camping areas: the Sele plain to the north, with the largest sites and the sand; the stretch between Agropoli and Acciaroli, more varied; and the south between Palinuro and Marina di Camerota, where the coast is high and the coves are reached by boat.

Paestum

The three Doric temples of Paestum are among the best preserved in the Greek world, better than many in Greece, and they stand in an open field a short way from the sea. The museum beside them holds the Tomb of the Diver, the only figurative Greek painting of the classical period to reach us. It takes a morning.

Inland

Behind the coast the Cilento rises quickly. The Vallo di Diano is a long flat valley with the charterhouse of Padula at the end of it, one of the largest monasteries in Europe; the Alburni are a limestone massif full of caves, among them Pertosa, which is visited by boat along an underground river.

Here the Mediterranean diet is not a fashion: it was first described in these villages.

After Ancel Keys, who lived at Pioppi for forty years