A medieval tower rises amid castle ruins and the remains of a Greek temple on the acropolis of the Greco-Roman seaport of Velia, by Marina di Ascea on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast in the Cilento region of Campania, southern Italy. An ancient rubble wall stands in the foreground with its foundations exposed.
Velia, Marina di Ascea, Campania, Italy: a cylindrical medieval tower, built by the Sanseverino family, crowns the ancient acropolis of this Graeco-Roman seaport. In the foreground in this view from the city’s excavated southern maritime district stands a rubble wall with its foundations now exposed. The acropolis hill, once a headland jutting into the Tyrrhenian Sea, was colonised around 538 to 535 BC by Ionian Greek settlers displaced by Persian invaders from their city of Phocaea, now in modern Turkey. They built a temple on the summit probably dedicated to the goddess Athena and the city developed into a commercial hub, with one port on the sea and another on the Alento river. The Greeks named their city Hyele, but the name then changed to Ele, Elea, and finally to Velia. The Romans took control in 273 BC and in 88 BC, it became a Roman municipality. Velia retained the right to mint coins and its citizens kept the right to speak Greek. Due to silting, Velia’s two ports are now far from the sea and the city also declined because it was bypassed by new overland trade routes. In the 9th century, most citizens left to escape malaria and raids by Saracen pirates, but some stayed to live on the acropolis. The settlement lasted until the late-1600s, when the acropolis was finally abandoned and the ruins below it vanished under soil and vegetation. The ruins were rediscovered in 1833. More recent excavations by archeologist Amedeo Maiuri found fortifications, a sea wall, gateways, frescoed houses and thermal baths. The acropolis retains the ruins of a medieval castle, remnants of the temple, a 2,000-seat Roman theatre and a medieval chapel. The city site is protected as the Parco Archeologico di Elea Velia and is also part of a wider UNESCO World Heritage Site encompassing the Cilento region, the Greek temples at Paestum and the Certosa di Padula.
Size: 2744px × 4123px
Location: Velia, Marina di Ascea, Campania, Italy.
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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