Velia

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Velia is an ancient town in Campania, Italy. Originally founded by the Greeks as Elea (see also List of traditional Greek place names) around 540 BC. It is best known as the home of the philosophers Parmenides and Zeno of Elea, as well as the Eleatic school of which they were a part.

Remains of the city walls, with traces of one gate and several towers, of a total length of over three miles, still exist, and belong to three different periods, in all of which the crystalline limestone of the locality is used. Bricks were also employed in later times; their form is peculiar to this place, each having two rectangular channels on one side, and being about 1.5 in. square, with a thickness of nearly 4 in. They all bear Greek brick-stamps. There are some remains of cisterns on the site, and, various other traces of buildings.

Ruins at Velia

Elea was founded around 540 BCE by Phocaean Greeks fleeing the Persian invasion of Ionia on the western coast of present-day Turkey, when they seized the territory from the Oenotrians. Together with the rest of the Greek colonies in southern coastal Italy, formed the so-called Magna Graecia, the Greek expansion into southern Italy, which had begun in the 8th century BC. Its coins were widely diffused in S. Italy. It remained independent longer than many Greek cities in Italy, finally becoming an ally of Rome around 273 BC, and, as a result of the Social War or Italian War, it gained the Roman franchise as a citizen municipium in 90-89 BC.

The site was later occupied by the medieval castle of Castellainmare della Bruca. It was abandoned in the middle ages and today it is the site of extensive ruins situated inside the Cilento National Park.