Cilento e Vallo di Diano

The Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park was created in December 1991 in the province of Salerno, in Campania, and at 1,810 km² it is one of the largest in Italy. Its emblem is Primula palinuri, a threatened species characteristic of its coastal cliffs.

The territory combines dolomitic mountains of moderate height, with a well-developed karst of dolines and caves, and a coast of cliffs, coves and beaches with sea caves and freshwater springs welling up beside the sea. The sclerophyllous Mediterranean vegetation is tiered in belts: dry coastal garrigue, holm oak woodland, mixed forests of oak, hornbeam and alder, natural beech forest and high-altitude grassland. The fauna stands out above all for its birds, particularly the raptors.

The cultural heritage is just as dense: there are traces of human occupation from the Palaeolithic and archaeological and historical remains of successive civilisations. Cilento was the frontier between the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia and the Etruscan and Lucanian peoples, and it preserves the remains of two great classical cities, Paestum and Velia. In 1997 the park was brought into UNESCO's MAB programme as a biosphere reserve, and in 1998 it was inscribed on the World Heritage List under the name Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park with the Archaeological Sites of Paestum and Velia and the Certosa di Padula. In 2010 it also became the first UNESCO Geopark in Italy. The region has a long history of emigration: between 1861 and 2001 the population of its municipalities grew by barely 20 %, and some 220,000 people live in the reserve today.