There is some bullshit going on with the “rediscovery” -part… It’s like, smack on the mountainside. You can plainly see it from the nearby town. And there are houses within a couple hundred meters of the site in the other direction…
The complex was lost and forgotten for centuries; then found by accident by a local pilot in 2000.
On a clear February morning in 2000, Nicolino Lombardi, a local historian and pilot, flew his ultralight over nearby Mt. San Nicola. He planned to photograph a recent landslide on the hills south of his village of Pietravairano in the Campania region of Italy. Lombardi had photographed this region in the past and was accustomed to seeing fragments of ancient Samnite, Roman, and medieval ruins mostly obscured by blankets of foliage. However, during this particular flight, the view was different. A recent brushfire had cleared the overgrowth and revealed a long-hidden treasure: the ruins of a theatre/temple complex. In his report following his discovery, Lombardi wrote, “This time, however, the symmetry immediately catches the eye, and everything is clear in a flash: I even seem to see a temple and a theater, with the colonnade still standing and the wide steps full of spectators” (Lombardi p.1).
There is some bullshit going on with the “rediscovery” -part… It’s like, smack on the mountainside. You can plainly see it from the nearby town. And there are houses within a couple hundred meters of the site in the other direction…
Excavations began in 2002
From a reddit post I found:
The complex was lost and forgotten for centuries; then found by accident by a local pilot in 2000.
On a clear February morning in 2000, Nicolino Lombardi, a local historian and pilot, flew his ultralight over nearby Mt. San Nicola. He planned to photograph a recent landslide on the hills south of his village of Pietravairano in the Campania region of Italy. Lombardi had photographed this region in the past and was accustomed to seeing fragments of ancient Samnite, Roman, and medieval ruins mostly obscured by blankets of foliage. However, during this particular flight, the view was different. A recent brushfire had cleared the overgrowth and revealed a long-hidden treasure: the ruins of a theatre/temple complex. In his report following his discovery, Lombardi wrote, “This time, however, the symmetry immediately catches the eye, and everything is clear in a flash: I even seem to see a temple and a theater, with the colonnade still standing and the wide steps full of spectators” (Lombardi p.1).
His photo from 2000
More info (in Italian)