Ποσειδωνία | |
 Paestum contains three of the best-preserved ancient Greek temples in the world, including the two Hera Temples shown above. | |
  Paestum Shown within Italy | |
| Location | Paestum, Province of Salerno, Campania, Italy |
|---|---|
| Region | Magna Graecia |
| Coordinates | 40°25′20″N15°0′19″E / 40.42222°N 15.00528°E /40.42222; 15.00528 |
| Type | Settlement |
| History | |
| Builder | Colonists fromSybaris and/orTroezen |
| Founded | Around 600 BCE; 2625 years ago |
| Periods | Archaic Greece toMiddle Ages |
| Site notes | |
| Management | Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici di Salerno, Avellino, Benevento e Caserta |
| Website | www |
| Official name | Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park with the Archeological Sites of Paestum andVelia, and theCertosa di Padula |
| Type | Cultural |
| Criteria | iii, iv |
| Designated | 1998 (22ndsession) |
| Reference no. | 842 |
| Region | Europe and North America |
Paestum (/ˈpɛstəm/PEST-əm,[1]US also/ˈpiːstəm/PEE-stəm,[2][3]Latin:[ˈpae̯stũː]) was a majorancient Greek city on the coast of theTyrrhenian Sea, inMagna Graecia. The ruins of Paestum are famous for their threeancient Greek temples in theDoric order dating from about 550 to 450 BCE that are in an excellent state of preservation. The city walls and amphitheatre are largely intact, and the bottom of the walls of many other structures remain, as well as paved roads. The site is open to the public, and there is a modernnational museum within it, which also contains the finds from the associated Greek site ofFoce del Sele.
Paestum was established around 600 BCE by settlers fromSybaris, a Greek colony in southern Italy, under the name ofPoseidonia (Ancient Greek:Ποσειδωνία). The city thrived as a Greek settlement for about two centuries, witnessing the development of democracy. In 400 BCE, theLucanians seized the city.Romans took over in 273 BCE, renaming it Paestum and establishing a Latin colony. Later, its decline ensued from shifts in trade routes and the onset of flooding and marsh formation.[4] AsPesto or Paestum, the townbecame a bishopric (now onlytitular), but it was abandoned in the Early Middle Ages, and left undisturbed and largely forgotten until the eighteenth century.
Today the remains of the city are found in the modernfrazione ofPaestum, which is part of thecomune ofCapaccio Paestum in theProvince of Salerno in the region ofCampania, Italy. The modern settlement, directly to the south of the archaeological site, is a popular seaside resort with long sandy beaches. ThePaestum railway station on theNaples-Salerno-Reggio Calabria railway line is directly to the east of the ancient city walls.
The Greek settlers who founded the city originally named itPoseidonia (Ancient Greek:Ποσειδωνία). It was eventually conquered by the localLucanians and later theRomans. The Lucanians renamed it toPaistos and the Romans gave the city its current name.[5]
Much of the most celebrated features of the site today are the three large temples in the Archaic version of the GreekDoric order, dating from about 550 to 450 BCE. All are typical of the period,[6] with massive colonnades having a very pronouncedentasis (widening as they go down), and very wide capitals resembling upturned mushrooms. Above the columns, only thesecond Temple of Hera retains most of itsentablature, the other two having only thearchitrave in place.
These were dedicated toHera andAthena (Juno andMinerva to the Romans), although previously they often have been identified otherwise, following eighteenth-century arguments. The two temples of Hera are right next to each other, while the Temple of Athena is on the other side of the town center. There were other temples, both Greek and Roman, which are far less well preserved.
Paestum is far from any sources of good marble. Unsurprisingly, the three main temples had few stone reliefs, perhaps using painting instead. Painted terracotta was used for some detailed parts of the structure. The large pieces of terracotta that have survived are in the museum.
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The whole ancient city of Paestum covered an area of approximately 120 hectares. Only the 25 hectares that contain the three main temples and the other main buildings have been excavated. The other 95 hectares remain on private land and have not been studied.
The ancient city was surrounded by defensive walls, which are largely intact. The walls are approximately 4.75 km (3 mi) long in its polygonal perimeter, typically 7 m (23 ft) high, and 5–7 m (16–23 ft) thick. Corresponding with the cardinal points, there were four main openings in the wall: Porta Sirena (east to the hills); Porta Giustizia (south, now to the modern village Paestum); Porta Marina (west to the sea); and Porta Aurea (north), which was later destroyed. Positioned along the wall were 24 square or round towers. There may have been as many as 28, but some of them (and Porta Aurea) were destroyed during the construction of a highway during the 18th century that effectively cut the ancient site in two.
The central area is completely clear of modern buildings and always has been largely so, since the Middle Ages. Although much stone has been stripped from the site, large numbers of buildings remain detectable by their footings or the lower parts of their walls, and the main roads remain paved. A low-builtheroon or shrine memorial to an unknown local hero survived intact; the contents are in the museum. Numerous tombs have been excavated outside the walls.
Thefirst Temple of Hera, built around 550 BCE by the Greek colonists, is the oldest surviving temple in Paestum and the one farthest south. 18th-century archaeologists named it "the Basilica" because some mistakenly believed it to be a Roman building. (The original Romanbasilica was essentially a civic form of building, before the basilica plan was adopted by the Early Christians for churches.)
Inscriptions and terracotta statuettes revealed that the goddess worshiped here wasHera. Later, analtar was unearthed in front of the temple, in the open-air site usual for a Greek altar. The faithful could attend rites andsacrifices without entering thecella or inner sanctuary.
The columns have a very strongentasis or curvature down their length, an indication of an early date of construction. Some of the capitals still retain visible traces of their original paint.[7] The temple is wider than most Greek temples, probably because there are two doors and a row of seven columns running centrally inside the cella, an unusual feature.[8] This may reflect a dual dedication of the temple. Having an odd number of columns, here nine, across the shorter sides also is very unusual; there are eighteen columns along the longer sides. This was possible, or necessary, because of the two doors, so that neither has a view blocked by a column.
On the highest point of the town, some way from the Hera Temples and north of the center of the ancient settlement, is theTemple of Athena. It was built around 500 BCE, and was for some time incorrectly thought to have been dedicated toCeres.[9] The architecture is transitional, being mainly built in early Doric style and partially Ionic. Three medieval Christian tombs in the floor show that the temple was at one time used as aChristian church.[citation needed]
Thesecond Temple of Hera was built around 460–450 BCE, just north of the first Hera Temple, the two both part of aHeraion, or sanctuary to the goddess. It was once thought to be dedicated toPoseidon, who may have been a secondary focus of worship there. Instead of the typical 20 flutes on each column, they have 24 flutes. The Temple of Hera II also has a wider column size and smaller intervals between columns. The temple was also used to worship Zeus and another deity, whose identity is unknown. There are visible on the east side the remains of two altars, one large and one smaller. The smaller one is a Roman addition, built when a road leading to aRoman forum was cut through the larger one. It also is possible that the temple originally was dedicated to both Hera and Poseidon; some offertory statues found around the larger altar are thought to demonstrate this identification.
| External videos | |
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 smARThistory – Ancient Greek Temples at Paestum, Italy[10] |
In the central part of the complex is the RomanForum, thought to have been built on the site of the preceding Greekagora. On the north side of the forum is a small Roman temple, dated to 200 BCE. It was dedicated to theCapitoline Triad,Jupiter,Juno andMinerva.
Between the forum and the temples of Hera and Poseidon, six small temple buildings from the Hellenistic period have been identified.[11]
To the north-east of the forum is theamphitheater. This is of normal Roman pattern, although much smaller than later examples. Only the western half is visible; in 1930 CE, a road was built across the site, burying the eastern half. It is said by local inhabitants that the civil engineer responsible was tried, convicted and received a prison sentence for what was described as wanton destruction of a historic site. There is also a small circular council hall (bouleuterion) or assembly space (ekklesiasterion), with seats in tiers. It was probably never roofed, but had a wall around it, perhaps with a smallarcade round the inside.[12] This ceased to have a role in Roman times and was filled over.[13]
Theheroön, close to the forum and the Temple of Athena, probably celebrated the founder of the city, though constructed around a century after the death of this unnamed figure. It was a lowtumulus with a walled rectangular enclosure faced with large stones around it. When it was excavated in 1954 a low stone chamber with a pitched roof was discovered at the centre, half below the surrounding ground level and half above. This containedseveral large, rare, and splendid bronze vessels, perhaps not locally made, and a large Athenian potteryblack-figureamphora of about 520–500 BCE. The bronze vessels had traces of honey inside. These are all now in the museum.[13]
Just south of the city walls, at a site still called Santa Venera, a series of smallterracottaoffertory molded statuettes of a standing nude woman wearing thepolos headdress of Anatolian and Syrian goddesses, which were dated to the first half of the sixth century BCE, were found in the sanctuary. Other similar ones have been excavated at other Paestum sanctuaries during excavations in the 1980s. The figure is highly unusual in the Western Mediterranean.[14] The open-airtemenos was established at the start of Greek occupation: a temple on the site was not built until the early fifth century BCE. A nude goddess is a figure alien to Greek culture before the famousCnidian Aphrodite byPraxiteles in the fourth century: iconographic analogies must be sought in PhoenicianAstarte and the Cypriote Aphrodite. "In places where the Greeks and Phoenicians came in contact with one another, there is often an overlapping in the persona of the two deities."[14]
Inscriptions make clear that during Roman times the cult was reserved toVenus.
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Paestum also is renowned for its painted tombs, mainly belonging to theLucanian period, while only one of them dates to the Greek period. However, this is theTomb of the Diver (Italian:Tomba del tuffatore), which is the most famous. It is named after the enigmatic scene, depicted on the underside of the covering slab, of a young man diving into a stream of water. It dates to the first half of the fifth century BCE (about 470 BCE), theGolden Age of the Greek town. It was found, on 3 June 1968, in a smallnecropolis some 1.5 km south of the ancient walls. The paintings have now been transferred to the museum. The tomb is painted with thetrue fresco technique and its importance lies in being "the only example of Greek painting with figured scenes dating from theOrientalizing,Archaic, orClassical periods to survive in its entirety. Among the thousands of Greek tombs known from this time (roughly 700–400 BCE), this is the only one found to have been decorated with frescoes of human subjects."[15]
The remaining four walls of the tomb are occupied bysymposium-related scenes, an iconography far more familiar from Greek pottery than the diving scene. All the five frescoes are displayed in the museum, together with other cycles from Lucanian painted tombs. In contrast to earlier Greek tomb paintings, these later scenes have many figures and a high proportion of scenes including horses andequestrian sports.
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A few kilometres from Paestum there was a temple complex at the mouth of theSele river (Foce del Sele in Italian) dedicated to Hera. The temple is now all but destroyed, and little remains of several other buildings. About 70 of the sixth-century BCEArchaicmetope relief panels on the temple and another building at the site were recovered, however. These fall into two groups, the earlier of which shows the story of the life ofHeracles in 38 surviving reliefs; the later group, of about 510 BCE, shows pairs of running women. The earlier cycle forms the centrepiece of the Paestum museum, set in place around walls of the original height. At the site there is amuseo narrante with video displays, but no original artefacts.[16]
TheNational Archaeological Museum of Paestum holds the largest collection, but many significant pieces were removed from the site before modern controls and are in a number of collections around the world. TheNational Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid has especially rich holdings, with two important Imperial Roman statues and many, very fine vases (see below). Other pieces, mostly painted pottery, are in theLouvre, theAntikensammlung Berlin, and other museums in Europe and America.
In the case ofpainted pottery, a number of individual artists, especially from the fourth century BCE, have been identified and givennotnames whose work has been found in tombs around the city and the region, and sometimes farther afield. It has been presumed that these artists were based in the city.
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The highlights of theNational Archaeological Museum of Paestum are mentioned above: the Sele metopes, the Tomb of the Diver, and the contents of the Heroon. The displays also show a number of large paintedterracotta architectural fragments from the temples and other buildings, manyGreek terracotta figurines, and incomplete larger terracotta statues, and pottery including painted vases.
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According toStrabo, the city was founded asPoseidonia (named after the Greek deity of the sea) byGreek Achaeans fromSybaris. The colonists had built fortifications close to the sea, but then decided to found the city farther inland at a higher elevation.[17]Solinus wrote that it was established byDorians.[18] The fortifications might have been built to the south of Poseidonia on the promontory whereAgropoli is now. According to the historical tradition the sanctuary toPoseidon was located there, after which the city would have been named. The date of Poseidonia's founding is not given by ancient sources, but the archaeological evidence gives a date of approximately 600 BCE.[19]
Alternatively in fact, the Sybarites may have beenTroezenians.Aristotle wrote that a group of Troezenians was expelled from Sybaris by the Achaeans after their joint founding of that city.[20]Gaius Julius Solinus calls Paestum aDorian colony[21] and Strabo mentions that Troezen once was called Poseidonia.[22] As a consequence it has been argued that Paestum was founded by theTroezenians referred to by Aristotle.[23] Another hypothesis is that the Sybarites were aided by Dorians in their founding of Poseidonia.[19]
Archaeological evidence from Paestum's first centuries indicates the building of roads, temples, and other features of a growing city. Coinage, architecture, and molded votive figurines all attest to close relations maintained withMetaponto in the sixth and fifth centuries.[24]
It is presumed that Poseidonia harbored refugees from its mother city, Sybaris, when that city was conquered by Croton in 510 BCE. In the early fifth century, Poseidonia's coins adopted the Achaean weight standard and the bull seen on Sybarite coins. A. J. Graham thinks it was plausible that the number of refugees was large enough for some kind ofsynoecism to have occurred between the Poseidonians and the Sybarites, possibly in the form of asympolity.[25]
Poseidonia might have had a major share in a new foundation of Sybaris, which lasted from 452/1 BCE until 446/5 BCE. This is suggested by the great resemblance of the coins of Sybaris to those of Poseidonia during this period. Possibly a treaty of friendship between Sybaris, its allies, and the Serdaioi (an unknown people) dates to this new foundation, because Poseidonia was the guarantor of this treaty.[26][27]
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It is not until the end of the fifth century BCE that the city is mentioned, when according to Strabo, the city was conquered by the Lucanians. From the archaeological evidence it appears that the two cultures, Greek and Oscan, were able to thrive alongside one another.
Many tomb paintings show horses and horse-racing, a passion of the Lucanian elites.
It became the Roman city of Paestum in 273 BCE in the aftermath of thePyrrhic War, in which the Graeco-Italian Poseidonians sided with kingPyrrhus of Epirus against theRoman Republic.
During theCarthaginian invasion of Italy byHannibal, the city remained faithful to Rome and afterward, was granted special favours such as the minting of its own coinage. The city continued to prosper during theRoman imperial period and became a bishopric as theRoman Catholic Diocese of Pesto around 400 CE.
By the time ofVirgil the city was "known for roses that bloomed twice a year", as he mentions in Book IV of hisGeorgics (c. 29 BCE).[28] Then highly unusual, this is now a common feature of moderncultivars ofgarden roses.
It started to go into decline between the fourth and seventh centuries CE, and was abandoned during theMiddle Ages. The bishopric was suppressed in 1100. Like Naples and most of the surrounding region, the inhabitants presumably spoke a Greek dialect throughout its history. The decline and desertion were probably due to changes in local land drainage patterns, leading to swampymalarial conditions. Raids by "Saracen" pirates and slavers also may have been a deciding factor. The remaining population seems to have moved to the more easily defended cliff-top settlement atAgropoli (i.e. "acropolis" or "citadel" in Greek), a few kilometres away, although this settlement became a base for Muslim raiders for a period. The Paestum site became overgrown and largely forgotten, although some stonespolia were collected and used inSalerno Cathedral byRobert Guiscard (d. 1085).
Despite stray mentions such as that in the history ofPietro Summonte in 1524, who correctly identified the three Doric temples as such, its ruins only came to wide notice again in the eighteenth century,[29] following the rediscovery of the Roman cities ofPompeii andHerculaneum, and during the construction of a new coastal road south fromNaples. The modern settlement had begun to revive by at least the sixteenth century, to the side of the ancient ruins. After a complicated start, the rediscovery of the three relatively easily accessible, and early, Greek temples created huge interest throughout Europe.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi visited to make a book of highly atmospheric but also accurateetchings, published in 1778; these and other prints were widely circulated.[30] The complete and relatively simple form of the temples became influential in earlyGreek Revival architecture.
In 1740 a proposal was made, but not executed, to remove columns for the newPalace of Capodimonte in Naples. Initially, eighteenth-century savants doubted that the structures had been temples, and it was suggested variously, that they included agymnasium, a publicbasilica or hall, or a "portico".[29] There also was controversy and misunderstanding of their cultural background.Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi, a clergyman andantiquarian, "the founder of the modern study ofMagna Graecia" (the ancient Greeks in Italy),[31] thought they wereEtruscan, in line with his theories that Greek colonists merely had joined existing cultures in Italy, founded by peoples from farther east.[32] He derived theetymology of "Poseidonia" from an inventedPhoenician sea deity.[33]
The first modern published account of the ruins wasLes Ruines de Paestum in 1764, by G. P. M. Dumont, who had been taken to the site in 1750, along with the architectJacques-Germain Soufflot, by Count Gazzola, an engineer for the government in Naples. Gazzola had drawn or commissioned measured drawings, to which Dumont added his own, as well as, more artistic plates. There was an expanded edition in 1769, the same year when a still more extensive account was published by the Englishman Thomas Major. By 1774 there were nine different illustrated publications on the site.[34]
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On September 9, 1943, Paestum was the location of the landing beaches of theU.S. 36th Infantry Division during theAlliedinvasion of Italy.German forces resisted the landings from the outset, causing heavy fighting within and around the town. Combat persisted around the town for nine days before the Germans withdrew to the north. The Allied forces set up their Red Cross first aid tents in and around the temples, as they were regarded as "off limits" to bombing by both sides.[35]
In 2024, the Italian Ministry of Culture announced that two Doric style temples were uncovered at Paestum.[36]
The coins of Paestum date from about 550 BCE. These early issues may all be festival coins; they usually depict Poseidon with an upraised trident. Issues continue until the reign ofTiberius. For unknown reasons Paestum alone—of all the smaller Italian mints—was allowed to continue minting bronze coins by a Senatorial decree of about 89 BCE, after minting had been centralized. Later coins carry "P. S. S. C.", standing for "Paesti Signatum Senatus Consulto" to reflect this.[37]
Archaeological sites inCampania | ||
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| Province of Avellino |     | |
| Province of Benevento | ||
| Province of Caserta | ||
| Province of Naples | ||
| Province of Salerno | ||
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