Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park with the Archeological Sites of Paestum and Velia, and the Certosa di Padula

Cilento is a mountainous region of Campania in southern Italy, and UNESCO records evidence of human occupation there from 250,000 years ago. Its sanctuaries and settlements line three east-west ridges, and in antiquity it formed the boundary between the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia and the Etruscan and Lucanian peoples. The property covers 159,110 hectares, and the region became Roman territory in the 3rd century BC.

On the coast, Paestum was founded around 600 BC as Poseidonia by settlers from the Greek colony of Sybaris, and three Doric temples of about 550 to 450 BC survive in excellent condition. The Lucanians seized the city in 400 BC, and in 273 BC the Romans took it and renamed it Paestum. Velia was founded in the second half of the 6th century BC by Greeks from Phocaea as Elea, and is known for the Eleatic school of philosophy of Parmenides and his student Zeno.

Paestum was abandoned in the Middle Ages and largely forgotten until the 18th century, when its temples became influential in early Greek Revival architecture. On 3 June 1968 the Tomb of the Diver, painted around 470 BC, was found south of the city walls. Inland, in the Vallo di Diano, the Certosa di San Lorenzo at Padula was founded in 1306 and took its present Baroque form in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the whole area was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1998.