Azienda Agrituristica Seliano - Campania
A letter to our guests by Cecelia Bellelli Baratta
I’ve been running this farm guest house for 15 years, and I would love to tell you about this family and its history, both present and past.
The farm is located very near Paestum, in the “Piana del Sele” area, where the ancient Greeks settled in 600 B.C. The property was acquired by the Bellellis in the late 18th century and has been cultivated as farmland ever since. The family was quite successful in the development of agriculture in the Sele river plain, so much so that in the 19th century Bellelli’s agricultural products were already exported to European capitals; and the family even boasted some stands at the 1862 Great London Exposition and at the Paris World Fair in 1867.
The first Baron Gaetano Bellelli was granted the title in 1806 by Joachim Murat, King of Naples (his full title was Joachim Napoleon I). The painter Edgar Degas, whose aunt was a Bellelli, even painted the famous portrait of the Bellelli family in 1860. It is nowadays on view at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
……Last, but certainly not least, your visit cannot end without visiting the neverending fascinating and thrilling Paestum. You can almost hear the ancients speaking as you meander through the city with its peerless architectural masterpieces -- the Doric temples of Neptune and Ceres -- or as you marvel at the Tomb of the Diver, the only surviving example of Greek fresco painting, still so alive after 2400 years,. ..
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