The Cilento lands are karstic in nature. Mankind has been present in the caves of these territories since the Middle Paleolithic (500.000 thousand years B.C.). The testimonies of human passage are still tangible, from the mountainous massifs of Grotte di Castelcivita to the Grotte dell'Angelo in the Vallo di Diano. 

The first Greeks arrived on Cilento coasts around the seventeenth century BC. In those places, later were founded the colonial cities of Pixunte, Molpa and the ancient Poseidonia (the Roman Paestum), built by the sybarite Achaeans. Subsequently, Lucani, Romans and Christians of the East began conflicts, wars and trade, promoting business and initiating the construction of new cities.