Discovering the Tanagro

According to some, water has memory: it collects sounds, emotions and suggestions along its path, and carries them with it, treasuring them. If this is true, then it is all the more reason to say that if there is an authentically representative river of Cilento, it is the Tanagro.

It originates in the mountains of Casalbuono as a humble stream, but it draws other streams of Cilento to itself, collects their waters and makes them its own, growing little by little until it becomes a river in the shadow of the imposing Certosa di Padula. Here, too, however, it continues its work as a collector: it enters the National Park of Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni, swells again, becoming a favorite spot for several colonies of birds, but also native fish such as Lucanian bleak and otters. But water, it is known, attracts not only animals: within the Natural Park one encounters the ruins of ancient temples, mills, and moving a little away from the right bank of the river, villages that precisely thanks to the Tanagro have been able to prosper.

The Alburni Mountains and the Tanagro Valley as seen from Caggiano

As it travels through the Vallo di Diano, the river continues on its way, passing under Roman bridges, recovering waters that have explored rock cavities, and it grows again, until it reaches Contursi Terme. Here, among many small springs, it is finally the Tanagro that flows into another river: the Sele, with which it shares membership in the Natural Park. And it will be the Sele that will take charge of carrying the waters of Cilento far away, until they travel free into the sea.

Here, this is the Tanagro: 92 kilometers of nature, history and traditions born from the river and returned to it. To follow its banks is to be guided to discover so much immense beauty, sometimes breaking away from the river to explore the villages and cultures it helped to create, then returning to its side and on to the next adventure.

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