ARCHAEOLOGICAL PARK OF ELEA-VELIA

Elaea was founded around 540 BC by Phocaeans who had fled their Persian-conquered city in Asia Minor. The colony's geographical location along the communication routes between Magna Graecia and Etruria contributed to its prosperity. In the^5th century BC, the city was home to the Eleatic school of pre-Socratic philosophy. Its most illustrious representative, Parmenides, pondered the notion of Being, unchanging and eternal. He is generally contrasted with Heraclitus of Ephesus, who argued for perpetual motion. Parmenides' disciple Zeno is considered the inventor of dialectics. Elaea later became a Roman colony and took the name Velia. The silting-up of its port and the opening of new trade routes, more oriented towards the Adriatic Sea, led to its inexorable decline. Like Paestum, the site was definitively abandoned due to its unsanitary conditions, which were conducive to malaria epidemics.

Visit. The archaeological park of Elée-Velia is quite extensive and comprises two distinct parts: the lower town and the acropolis, linked by the - steep! - via Porta Rosa. Access to the lower town is via the Porta Marina Sud, cut into the city walls dating back to the ^6th century BC. The town's various buildings date from the Hellenistic and Roman eras. These include the thermal baths, whose frigidarium is adorned with mosaics depicting marine animals, the foundations of houses and stores, and a multi-level hypogeum with a scenographic layout, whose function has yet to be determined. Via Porta Rosa leads to the upper part of the town, with, halfway up, the remains of a sanctuary dedicated to Asclepius, the god of medicine. At the very top, in a gorge carving the summit of the hill, is the Porta Rosa, a massive, carefully crafted structure dating from the ^4th century BC and a rare example of the use of the arch in Greek civil architecture. It was the gateway to the unexplored southern quarter of the city. On the acropolis, nothing remains of the temple, probably dedicated to Athena: in the Middle Ages, it served as the foundation for a castle whose massive cylindrical tower still dominates the landscape. Also worth seeing are the remains of a Roman theater and two well-appointed structures housing artifacts recovered during excavations and recounting the history and daily life of Elée-Velia.