7 places you must visit when you go to Paestum
Located within the Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park, the archaeological area of Paestum is Known for the beauty and integrity of its beautiful Doric temples, which have contributed to classifying the site as a Unesco heritage site. Paestum was founded by settlers from Sibari in the 7th century BC and was conquered by the Lucanians and then by the Romans, who made it an important center that began to decline only after the fall of the Roman Empire. The site was abandoned due to swamping which caused the spread of malaria and the silting up of the port. In the XVIII century, during the construction of a new street, the ruins were brought to light. Paestum became one of the main places to visit during the Grand Tour and the great archaeological discoveries that interested Italy and Europe in the eighteenth century.
The temple of Neptune
The temple of Neptune in Paestum is one of the most beautiful and best preserved Doric temples in the world.It was erroneously attributed to Neptune by eighteenth-century scholars, who associated the largest and most impressive building in the city with its patron deity. Although it still retains its name, the temple is actually a sacred space dedicated to Hera, wife of Zeus and goddess of marriage, conjugal fidelity and childbirth. Of peripteral type, it has 14 columns on the long sides and 6 on the facade. The fluted and tapered columns rest on a large travertine staircase that raises the building making it decidedly imposing before our eyes. The architrave rests in the upper part and, even higher up, the trabeation and the pediment. Inside, a high step raises the naos, the sacred cell where the divine simulacrum was kept, access to which was permitted only to priests. Outside the temple, the remains of some altars and a small temple were found, where ceremonial rituals were generally held in honor of the divinity. The dating of the temple of Neptune is around the middle of the fifth century, in the same years in which the great temple of Zeus in Olympia was built and clearly reflects a stylistic evolution compared to the other two important buildings that we find in the ancient city.
The Tomb of the Diver
The tomb of the diver is the most important artifact kept in the Archaeological Museum of Paestum. Made around 470 BC, it represents a real uniqueness in the ambit of Greek-style funerary paintings. Highly crafted, it features a very complex narrative scene along all the internal sides of the case. Inside it, in fact, the paintings illustrate a funeral symposium, which evoke a convivial setting, as expressed in the typical iconography found in Attic red-figure ceramics. There are some men lying on the kinai (typical triclinate beds) intent on drinking wine, playing the aulos or lyra and conversing with each other. The narration is followed by the legendary "dive" that the deceased undertakes to reach the underworld. The scene is painted on the slab covering the tomb, showing a young man who symbolically expresses the passage from the world of the living to that of the dead. The tomb of the diver was discovered by the archaeologist Mario Napoli in 1968, a few kilometers from Paestum, in a small necropolis of the fifth century BC, in the locality of Tempa del Prete.
The basilica
The basilica is the oldest of the three temples of Paestum. From the archaic forms, it was erroneously mistaken for a Basilica, in the era of the Grand Tour, due to the absence of the upper part and the strong resemblance to such porticoed buildings of the Greco-Roman era. In ancient times the Basilicas were not religious buildings, but courts or public buildings linked to commercial transactions and public affairs in general. This thesis was denied by subsequent and more recent investigations, which definitively allowed the temple to be placed around 550 BC, or almost a century before the more well-known temple of Neptune. As for the latter, the so-called Basilica must also have been built in honor of the goddess Hera, as evidenced by the numerous votive finds found near the structure. In all likelihood a double cult was celebrated inside the naos, probably for Hera and Zeus, as evidenced by the rows of columns that clearly separate the sacred cell into two equal spaces. Unfortunately, the entire upper part of the building has been lost, but according to some reconstructions, it must have had painted decorations with fake lion-head gutters and palm-shaped antefixes.
The temple of Ceres
The temple of Ceres of Paestum is located near the ancient via sacra, in the northern area of the city. Respecting the chronological order, it was the second of the three temples, built around 500 BC. It is of the peripteral type (6 columns on the short sides and 13 on the long sides) and still retains all the original columns. Also in this case we are faced with an erroneous classification, since the deity to whom it was dedicated was Athena and not Ceres, goddess of the harvest. Generally all the buildings that were located near the ancient city gates were built in honor of the divinity who was supposed to protect the crops and crops. This is not the case in Paestum, since the discovery of numerous votive statuettes of Athena in the surrounding area allows us to attribute the dedication to the goddess of wisdom and the arts with some certainty. The temple stands on a small hill, which in late antiquity was protected from swamping by the city, which allowed the Christian community of the eighth century to transform it into a church, walling up the columns and knocking down the cell walls. These building interventions were demolished during a restoration that took place in the 1940s, which restored the original forms of the ancient Greek temple.
The town walls
Paestum is the only city of Magna Graecia where the walls are perfectly preserved. It develops along a perimeter of about 5 and a half km and perfectly shows the solid defensive system that the ancient Greek cities had, reinforced by 28 quadrangular watchtowers. The wall layout is made up of a solid local travertine, with a height that must have reached even 7 meters, making the city practically impregnable. At the four cardinal points, the four great gates of the city were located: Porta Aurea, Porta Sirena, Porta Giustizia and, finally, Porta Marina to the south, the main access to the beach. The walls were restructured and modified in Lucan and Roman times and constitute a real monument, which can already be observed during the path that leads to the entrance to the archaeological area.
The amphitheate
Visible only in part, as buried by the construction of the modern road, the amphitheate of Paestum today retains only a few steps of the Ima Cavea, the lower part of the structure intended to welcome the public who took their seats to watch the famous gladiatorial shows. The amphitheater is accessed from what was the ancient porta triumphalis,preceded by a circular ambulatory made up of arches resting on some brick pillars, above which the completion of the cavea was positioned. The construction of the building dates back to the 1st century BC and was remodeled during the early imperial age to increase its capacity. Without underground spaces, it has a side gallery which must have extended up to the Libitina gate, the divinity responsible for the cults of the dead. The door was, in fact, the one through which the gladiators who died during the games were led out of the arena.
The archaeological museum
In ancient times, Paestum was much closer to the sea than it is now and the river that flowed there made it unhealthy , contributing to the abandonment of the city. Everything will be explained to you in the museum, starting from the eighteenth-century rediscovery, with the splendid representations that Piranesi made of it (yes, the same as the villa of the priory of Malta).
Even if there were no sculptural decorations, neither in the tympanums nor in the metopes, you mustn't think that the temples of Paestum were bare as we see them today. They were in fact covered with a white and colored stucco.
If you pay attention you will in fact notice the traces of the red and blue coloring and perhaps there were also plant motifs to enrich the empty spaces. Even the statues were completely colored so that they had to look real.
