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Amalfi and Paestum Temples

Private tour of  Amalfi and Pestum Temples from the last 8 / 9 hours.
A lot could has been written and more can still be written about  Amalfi, the legend tells that Hercules fell in love with the nymph Amalfi, a love which was cruelly ended by her death. The nymph was then buried in this, the most beautiful place in the world, and the city which was built here was named after her. Ancient Maritime Republic Amalfi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its beauty.  Amalfi nestles in the ravine of the "Valle dei Mulini". Its churches, towers and arcade houses, grouped together with attractive irregularity, rise above a small harbour and are backed by precipices of wild magnificence. At its peak in the 11th century, Amalfi was a supreme naval power, a bitter enemy of the northern maritime republics, Venice, Pisa and Genoa and had a population of 70.000. Its navigation tables, the " Tavole Amalfitane" , formed the world's first maritime code and governed all shipping in the Mediterranean for centuries. Amalfi was founded in the 9 th century and soon came under the rule of a doge. As a consequence of its connections with the Orient, the city claims to have introduced to Italy such modern wonders as paper, coffee and carpets. This small town still bears many reminders of its seafaring and trading heyday and is now one of Italy's most famous seaside spots. To see: the Church of St Antonio, the Convent of St Francesco, the Paper Museum, the Chapel of St. Giuseppe del Castrista and the sumptuous Amalfi Cathedral. The most important of the town's craft traditions is that of paper making, which began in the 1700's. DueGofli Car Service suggests an unforgettable lunch at one of the typical restaurants of the city as Ristorante La Caravella, Ristorante Marina Grande, Ristorante Eolo and many others. Paestum is the only well-preserved Greek Temples north of Sicily (site open every day from 9:00 a.m. to one hour before sunset — the museum is open every day from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., except the first and the third monday of the month). It spreads across a large area at the bottom end of the Piana del Sele, a wide flat plain grazed by buffalos that produce the best quality of southern Italy's mozzarella cheese. Paestum, or Poseidonia as it was then known, was founded by the Greeks from Sybaris in the sixth century BC, and later, in 273 BC, colonized by the Romans, who latinized the name. But by the ninth century a combination of malaria and Saracen raids had decimated the population and left the buildings deserted and gradually overtaken by thick forest, and the site wasn't rediscovered until the eighteenth century during the building of a road ordered by Charles III. Neptune, Basilica and Ceres are the three golden-stoned temples that are the among the best preserved Doric temples in Europe. The Temple of Neptune, dating from about 450 BC, is the most complete, with only its roof and parts of the inner walls missing. The Basilica of Hera, built a century or so earlier, retains its double rows of columns, while the Temple of Ceres at the northern end of the site was used as a Christian Church for a time. Not only the celebrated temples have survived. An amphitheatre and much of the 4 km circuit of walls still stand to some height, along with some of the towers and gates. The Museum across the road holds finds from the site and the surroundings. The masterpiece is the "Tomb of the Diver", a graceful and expressively naturalistic piece of work, possibly the only existent example of Greek wall painting.