Teggiano

The Lucanians built Tegianum here in the fourth century BC on an isolated hill; it became a Roman municipium and later took Gracchan and Neronian colonists. The valley below still carries a version of the town's old name, Diano, a naming that runs the other direction from what a visitor might expect: the town gave the valley its identity, not the reverse. The Sanseverino ruled from 1239 to 1556, long enough to fold castle, cathedral and the wider Vallo di Diano into a single stronghold of the Kingdom of Naples.

Three thousand residents now live within walls that also hold thirteen churches, the upper town rising on the ridge to the castle while the lower walls still show the Roman-Lucanian foundations beneath the medieval fabric. The valley stretches out below, flat and wide against the hill town's verticality. What the ridge position and the family's three-century hold add up to is a town built to watch its own valley, and named for it before the valley returned the favor.