The National Park of Cilento and Vallo di Diano (Link) is the second largest territorial park of Italy. The area is extremely diverse, with pearly coasts and wild mountains, roaming rivers and quiet streams, steep cliffs and deep forests. It also holds a number of old caves, where you can find traces of human populations dating all the way back to the mid Stone Age, 500.000 years BC.
The place is mythical, mysterious and full of history and culture. You can find the myth about the song of the nymph Leucosia, the cape where, according to the legend, the steersman of Enea, Palinuro, drowned, the old Greek cities of Elea and Paestum and the spectacular monastery of Padula.
No less impressive are the flora and the fauna of the area. There are nearly 1800 different wild species of plants, of which 10 % are endemic and/or rare, and it houses wild animals nearly extinct in the local part of Apennines, the mountain chain that runs through big parts of Italy.