Castiglione di Paludi Archaeological Park

Have you ever heard of the Castiglione di Paludi Archaeological Park? It is one of the oldest pre-Hellenic sites in Calabria and one of the rare examples of Brettian civilisation. The Castiglione di Paludi Archaeological Park is located in the municipality of Paludi, in the province of Cosenza, on a hill about 330 metres above sea level. Visiting this site is exciting: it is a place of considerable archaeological and scenic interest, immersed in silence and nature, only minimally investigated by scholars and therefore still rich in precious buried evidence.

We are greeted by the remains of the so-called Long Wall: the fortification that runs around the settlement, dating back to between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Who founded the settlement that now forms the Castiglione di Paludi Archaeological Park? Certainly the Brettii people: a tribe of Lucanian origin who arrived in Calabria around 356 BC and settled in these hills, where they became protagonists of the region's most ancient history, before the arrival of the Greek colonists. However, archaeological excavations have shown that the site of Castiglione di Paludi was occupied as early as the 9th century by the indigenous Enotri people. The Archaeological Park of Castiglione di Paludi preserves the remains of private houses, separated by a large road (plateia) which, intersecting at right angles with the smaller ones (stenopoi), still gives an idea of the original neighbourhoods.

Where can you admire some of these precious finds? At the Museum of the Brettii and Enotri in Cosenza, which traces the historical stages and exhibits artefacts representative of these two important indigenous civilisations, through grave goods from the ancient necropolises (Piano Agretto).