Cilento National Park, a paradise in Italy...

From Naples to Amalfi, Italy's western resorts buzz with tourists and expensive hotels. But venture a little further south, to the Cilento, and you discover the rocky coves, wild flowers and superlative seafood restaurants that the Italians have long kept to themselves. The Cilento is largely uncharted territory for international tourism, but the pleasures of the area are to be found in the thrill of discovering tiny villages and the 7th-century Greek temples of Paestum. This stretch of coast offers visitors a genuine welcome that has been lost in the tourist shops of the Bay of Naples, as well as having a cluster of elegant hotels.  This territory is also rich in archaeological sites, such as the Greek temples of Paestum and the Greek city of Velia, in addition to the defense towers against the saracene pirates incursions along the Cilento coast.

Cilento is famous for its olive oil, one of the best of Italy, that has earned the denominational marking "Olio d'Oliva Extravergine Cilento DOP"; other specialty of this area is the white fig, the buffalo mozzarella and the artichoke of Paestum IGP.
Parco Nazionale del Cilento e Vallo di Diano 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, Cervati and Gelbison and the coastal buttresses of Mt. Bulgheria and Mt. Stella.Its peculiarity is given by the width and the heterogeneity of the territory it covers. Consequently, the ecological features of the territory are extremely heterogeneous too: environments which have remained almost unchanged alternate with areas which on the contrary have been strongly modified by the presence of urban centers and densely inhabited valleys.

Cilento, a land with gentle morphology characterized by hills covered with green and ashy-colored olive groves that are reflected in the blue Tyrrheanian sea is at the same time a land with a very harsh morphology set among lively streams, lunar landscapes, chestnut and ilex tree woods, towns clinging to the rocks or lying along the banks. It is not easy to imagine that this fresco, made of charming and clashing shapes and colors, is given by the twofold geological nature of the rocks forming Cilento: the "Flysch del Cilento", mainly widespread near the hydrogeographical basin of the river Alento and the main mountains of western Cilento, like Mt. Centaurino (1,433m), and the "calcareous rocks" forming the inner (Alburno-Cervati) and southern (Mt. Bulgheria, Mt. Cocuzzo) mountain groups of Cilento e Vallo di Diano National Park.