Archaeological Park of Paestum: Greek and Roman City in Italy
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very High
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Classical
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical
- Civilizations
- Ancient Greek, Roman
- Site type
- City
On this page35 sections
History
The Archaeological Park of Paestum in Italy preserves the remains of Poseidonia, a Greek city founded around 600 BC in the ancient Greek-speaking region of southern Italy known as Magna Graecia. The city later became the Roman colony of Paestum, and its surviving temples, streets, walls, public buildings, sanctuaries, and tombs trace more than a millennium of changing Greek, Italic, Roman, and Christian use.
Before the Greek foundation
The area was occupied long before the foundation of Poseidonia. Paleolithic through Bronze Age tools and objects were found east of the First Temple of Hera, while hut remains near Porta Giustizia and Neolithic settlement traces near the Temple of Athena indicate established communities before the Greek city. During the Eneolithic period, the two local heights were occupied by communities of the Gaudo culture, which used the area for both settlement and funerary activity. The Gaudo necropolis north of Paestum belongs to this cultural tradition.
Poseidonia and the Greek city
Greek colonists established Poseidonia around 600 BC, or during the seventh century BC. Strabo, a Greek geographer and historian whose writings preserve descriptions of ancient Italian cities, connected its foundation with Sybaris. Other traditions associate the colonists with Troezen or with Dorian assistance. Archaeological evidence suggests that a fortified coastal outpost, or teichos, may have preceded a larger settlement, or oikesis, farther inland.
Sybaris established commercial sub-colonies and sanctuaries along the Tyrrhenian coast. Poseidonia developed through maritime and inland exchange with Greek, Etruscan, Latin, and local Italic communities. A necropolis discovered outside the walls in 1969 indicates that the polis, or Greek city-state, existed by about 625 BC.
Poseidonia reached its greatest prosperity between about 560 and 440 BC. Its development benefited from changing Etruscan influence north of the Sele, the destruction of Siris, and especially the destruction of Sybaris by Croton in 510 BC. Many Sybarite refugees and much of their wealth probably reached Poseidonia after that event. A subterranean monument built during this period may have commemorated Is, the legendary founder of Sybaris.
During the sixth and fifth centuries BC, Poseidonia maintained close relations with Metapontum. Its coinage followed the Achaean weight standard. The city may have sheltered Sybarite refugees, taken part in the refoundation of Sybaris between 452/451 and 446/445 BC, and guaranteed a treaty involving Sybaris and its allies.
Lucanian rule
Between about 420 and 410 BC, the Lucanians gained control of the city and renamed it Paistom. Greek and Oscan traditions continued alongside one another. Lucanian prosperity is reflected in painted pottery, richly decorated tombs, funerary goods, local products, coinage, and the continued construction of civic buildings influenced by Greek forms.
In 332 BC, Alexander the Molossian, king of Epirus, briefly defeated the Lucanians at Paistom and took hostages. He died in battle at Pandosia in 331 BC, after which the city returned to Lucanian control.
Roman Paestum
Rome took Paistom from the Lucanian confederation in 273 BC, established a Latin colony, and renamed the city Paestum. A Latin colony was a Roman settlement whose inhabitants held a defined form of Latin civic status. Paestum became a close ally of Rome and a socius navalis, an allied community required to provide ships and sailors.
Paestum remained loyal to Rome during Hannibal’s invasion of Italy. In recognition of that loyalty, it received the right to mint bronze coinage, a privilege that continued until the reign of Tiberius. The city’s earliest coins begin around 550 BC and commonly show Poseidon holding a raised trident. Later bronze issues bear the abbreviation “PSSC,” referring to the authority of the Paestum senate.
Roman rule altered the layout and institutions of the Greek city. The Forum replaced and reduced the earlier agora, the principal Greek civic and commercial square, while taking part of the southern sanctuary’s sacred precinct. Roman public, religious, and entertainment buildings were added, including a probable Capitolium, a temple dedicated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, a sanctuary of Fortuna Virilis, and an amphitheater. The Via Appia and Via Popilia diverted major commercial movement away from the coastal city.
Christianity, decline, and abandonment
Christianity reached Paestum relatively early, and martyrdoms are associated with the reign of Diocletian. Around 370 AD, a resident named Gavinio reportedly brought the body of the apostle Saint Matthew to the city. The body was later transferred to Capaccio Vecchio and Salerno. Paestum was a bishopric by at least the fifth century, but the bishopric was suppressed in 1100.
During late antiquity, a Christian church was built near the Temple of Athena, and the temple itself was later converted into a church. The fertility associations of Hera’s pomegranate continued in local Christian devotion to the Madonna del Granato.
Several environmental and economic changes contributed to Paestum’s decline. The mouth of the Salso River silted up, flooding created marshland, malaria affected the area, and the harbor became choked with sediment. Changes in trade routes further weakened the city. The inhabited zone contracted toward the higher ground around the Temple of Athena, and the remaining population left during the eighth or ninth century, moving toward the more defensible settlement of Capaccio or, according to another tradition, Agropoli. Saracen raids may also have contributed to the abandonment.
Reuse and rediscovery
In the eleventh century, Roger the Norman began removing material from the temples. Robert Guiscard, a Norman ruler of southern Italy, also took marble and sculpture from the abandoned city for use in Salerno Cathedral.
The ruins became overgrown and were largely forgotten. From the sixteenth century, a small settlement developed around the Church of the Annunciation. Renaissance writers referred to Paestum’s celebrated roses without knowing the city’s exact location. The site attracted wider attention in the eighteenth century, after the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum and the construction of a coastal road.
Paestum then became an important destination on the Grand Tour. Giovanni Battista Piranesi published influential etchings in 1778, and his widely circulated views helped shape European perceptions of the ruins. Johann Joachim Winckelmann visited in 1758, influencing his interpretation of Greek art. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe visited in 1787 and regarded the temples as evidence against the idealized image of slender Doric architecture. The buildings also influenced the development of early Greek Revival architecture.
Early interpretations of the monuments were frequently mistaken. The First Temple of Hera was called the “Basilica,” the Temple of Athena was identified as the Temple of Ceres, and the largest temple was attributed to Neptune. Eighteenth-century scholars variously regarded the buildings as temples, gymnasia, basilicas, halls, or porticoes. A proposal made in 1740 to remove temple columns for the Palace of Capodimonte was not carried out.
Archaeology and modern history
The first modern published descriptions appeared in 1764, followed by an expanded edition in 1769 and numerous illustrated publications by 1774. Archaeological work was delayed because mineral deposits from the Salso River were thought to have covered and destroyed most of the ancient city. Excavations began in the early twentieth century after those deposits were recognized as relatively recent.
Investigations from 1907 to 1914 concentrated on the First Temple of Hera and the area toward the Forum. Work from 1925 to 1938 explored the Forum, amphitheater, roads, Temple of Athena, and city walls. Parts of the walls were restored during this period, sometimes with methods later regarded as questionable.
Postwar excavations expanded in the 1950s. They recovered votive deposits near the temples of Hera and Athena, removed later additions from the Temple of Athena, and uncovered the subterranean heroon in 1954. Later work revealed residential blocks west of the Via Sacra and clarified the development of the ancient city. Systematic excavation of the necropoleis from the late 1960s into the early 1970s brought to light the Tomb of the Diver, painted tombs, and rich local ceramic production. From 1988 onward, coordinated excavation, restoration, and presentation projects continued to investigate and conserve the monuments.
Restoration and safety work in the temple area between 2003 and 2013 improved the condition of the buildings and provided evidence about their construction materials and techniques. In June 2019, work on the city walls led to the accidental discovery of a previously unknown fourth temple. Two additional Doric-style temples were reported as uncovered in 2024.
On 9 September 1943, Paestum lay near the landing area of the United States 36th Infantry Division during the Allied invasion of Italy. Fighting continued around the town for nine days. Allied forces established Red Cross first-aid tents in and around the temples because both sides treated the monuments as off-limits to bombing.
The archaeological area forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage property “Cilento and Vallo di Diano National Park with the Archaeological Sites of Paestum and Velia, and the Certosa di Padula,” inscribed in 1998 under criteria iii and iv. Paestum is also included within a biosphere reserve.
Remains
The ancient city covered approximately 120 hectares. About 25 hectares containing the principal temples and buildings have been excavated, while approximately 95 hectares lie on private land and have not been fully investigated. The site is enclosed by a polygonal defensive circuit about 4.75 kilometres long, and its principal monuments remain concentrated within the ancient urban area.
Walls, gates, and streets
Defensive circuit and entrances
The city walls follow the underlying travertine formation. They were built with two outer curtains of large squared blocks, with earth packed between them. The circuit is about 5 to 7 metres thick and approximately 7 metres high. Twenty-eight square or circular towers reinforced the defenses.
Four principal gates correspond to the cardinal directions. Porta Sirena on the east bears an apotropaic fantastic creature, while Porta Giustizia on the south has a broad vestibule protected by one circular tower and one square tower. Porta Marina on the west, toward the sea, has a paved vestibule with similar tower defenses. Porta Aurea on the north was demolished in the early nineteenth century to allow the modern road to pass. Forty-seven smaller openings, known as posterulae, also served access and defense.
Via Sacra
The Via Sacra was used for religious processions and was exposed by excavation in 1907. It is about 9 metres wide and paved with large limestone blocks, some of which retain wheel ruts. Raised sidewalks bordered the road, and habitation quarters extend along sections of both sides. The Roman paving follows the earlier Greek route, preserving a major line of movement through the city.
Forum and civic buildings
Roman Forum
The rectangular Roman Forum was laid out after the foundation of the Latin colony on the site of the earlier Greek agora. It reduced the earlier public square and occupied part of the southern sanctuary’s sacred precinct. Public and religious buildings, shops, and porticoes bordered the Forum, which served administrative, commercial, religious, and civic purposes.
Southern Forum complex
On the southern side of the Forum stands a square, apsidal complex built over an earlier Greek structure, probably a stoa. Four marble column bases around an octagonal feature have led to its identification as a possible macellum, a Roman market building. An adjoining rectangular building with wall pilasters and an exedra is thought to have been the curia, or council house. A Roman Republican Italic temple survives beneath its southern wall.
Another rectangular room contains partly excavated and reconstructed baths. A small structure with three podia was probably the civic lararium, a shrine for protective and ancestral spirits. Together, these buildings illustrate the mixture of administrative, commercial, religious, and bathing functions around the Roman public square.
Capitolium and comitium
The northern side of the Forum contains the so-called Italic Temple, probably the Roman Capitolium. It is an hexastyle temple, meaning that six columns stood across its front, raised on a high podium. A broad staircase led to the building, with a simple rectangular altar in front. Its eastern side joins the stepped comitium, an assembly space entered through vaulted corridors from the Forum and from the east. The facade facing the Forum served as a suggestum, or speakers’ platform.
Treasury and amphitheater
A small rectangular Greek building east of the Forum was probably the city treasury. Behind it is the amphitheater, whose exterior was faced in brick. Founded around 50 BC, the amphitheater initially lacked its outer ring. It retains parts of the cavea, or seating area, and a high balteus, the barrier separating spectators from the arena. An outer ring of brick arcades was added in the late first century AD, and the modern road passes over about one-third of the building.
Bouleuterion
The small circular bouleuterion, or council and assembly building, had tiered seating and was probably unroofed. A surrounding wall may have contained an internal arcade. The building ceased to function during the Roman period and was subsequently filled.
Greek temples and sanctuaries
First Temple of Hera
The First Temple of Hera, traditionally called the Basilica, is the oldest surviving major temple at Paestum. Construction began around 560 BC. It is a Doric peripteral temple, meaning that a single external colonnade surrounds the inner chamber, with nine columns on each short side and eighteen on each long side.
The central column on the front aligns with a single internal colonnade, an unusual arrangement for an archaic temple. The building lacks its pediments, and the interior is divided by a central row of columns. Inscriptions, terracotta statuettes, and an altar in front of the temple identify Hera as its principal deity. Hera was associated with marriage, fertility, childbirth, and the protection of the household.
The column shafts have strongly curved profiles known as entasis, a deliberate swelling used partly to correct the visual impression that a straight column narrows at the center. Some capitals retain traces of their original paint. The temple’s unusual width may relate to its two entrances and central internal colonnade, while its arrangement allowed worshippers to take part in outdoor rites and sacrifices without entering the inner chamber.
Second Temple of Hera
The Second Temple of Hera was built around 460 to 450 BC immediately north of the first temple. Older interpretations called it the Temple of Neptune, but its cultic attribution remains uncertain. It has been proposed as a temple of Hera, Zeus, or Apollo. The building was also used for the worship of Zeus and another unidentified deity.
The temple is constructed from large travertine blocks laid without mortar. Its columns have twenty-four flutes rather than the more usual twenty, and they are wider than those of the First Temple of Hera, with narrower spaces between them. The classical Doric design has been compared with the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, whose chronology helped establish the approximate date of construction.
Much of the entablature, the horizontal architectural assembly above the columns, survives. Two eastern altars also remain, one large and one smaller. The smaller altar is a Roman addition associated with a road leading toward the Forum.
Temple of Athena
The Temple of Athena, formerly called the Temple of Ceres, was built around 500 BC on the city’s highest point, north of the public center and away from the temples of Hera. It is the smallest of the three major temples. Its design combines Doric columns in the outer colonnade with Ionic columns in the inner chamber, making it a transitional form in Greek architecture.
Three medieval Christian graves in the floor indicate the building’s later use as a church. The temple belongs to the sanctuary of Athena, a goddess associated with wisdom, craft, and warfare, and forms part of the unusually well-preserved Doric architectural tradition of Magna Graecia.
Fourth temple
A fourth temple was found during wall restoration in 2019. It dates to the first quarter of the fifth century BC and measures approximately 15.6 by 7.5 metres. Probably less than 3 metres high, it is a small peripteral tetrastyle temple, with four columns across its front and seven along its sides. Its transitional Doric style falls between the Archaic and Classical periods. The building was abandoned between the late second and early first centuries BC.
Other Greek sanctuaries
Six small Hellenistic temple buildings have been identified between the Forum and the temples of Hera. Other Greek and Roman temples also stood within the city. The sanctuary of Hera at the mouth of the Sele lay outside the walls and probably had commercial or market-related functions. It was an open-air sacred precinct associated with a foundation tradition involving the Argonauts, the legendary companions of Jason in the quest for the Golden Fleece.
The principal temple at the Sele is now greatly damaged, but approximately seventy sixth-century BC metope relief panels were recovered from it and another building. One earlier group includes thirty-eight surviving scenes from the life of Heracles. A later group, dated around 510 BC, shows pairs of running women. The earlier reliefs are preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Paestum.
Water management and residential areas
Underground gallery
A 50-metre underground gallery connected the First Temple of Hera with the Second Temple of Hera. Reached by a stairway, it contained four collection wells for rainwater and roof runoff. The passage also served ritual ablutions. Its water-management role addressed the salinity of nearby spring water and the poor potability of water from Capodifiume.
Residential quarters
The residential areas have not been completely excavated. Exposed sections include substantial elite structures built over earlier buildings. Later work west of the Via Sacra has helped clarify the urban development of the city, while the main roads remain paved and many other buildings survive as foundations or lower wall courses.
Heroon and sanctuaries outside the center
Heroon near the Forum
A low heroon, a shrine or memorial associated with a hero, founder, or distinguished dead person, stands near the Forum and the Temple of Athena. It probably commemorated the city’s unnamed founder and was built about a century after the founder’s death. The monument consisted of a low mound and a rectangular enclosure faced with large stones.
Excavation in 1954 revealed a partly subterranean stone chamber with a pitched roof. Inside were large bronze vessels, possibly made outside the region, traces of honey, and an Athenian black-figure amphora dated to about 520 to 500 BC. These objects are preserved in the museum.
Santa Venera sanctuary
The Santa Venera sanctuary south of the city walls produced small molded terracotta votive statuettes of a standing nude woman wearing a polos headdress. The figures are associated with Anatolian and Syrian goddesses and date to the first half of the sixth century BC. An open-air temenos, or formally bounded sacred precinct, was established at the beginning of Greek occupation, while a temple was added only in the early fifth century BC. Roman inscriptions show that the cult was then reserved for Venus.
Necropoleis and painted tombs
Gaudo necropolis
Numerous necropoleis lie outside the city walls. The Gaudo necropolis, about 1 kilometre from the archaeological area and extending over approximately 2,000 square metres, belongs to the distinct Gaudo cultural tradition. It was discovered accidentally during construction of a United States Army airstrip during the Salerno landings.
Gaudo graves were rock-cut “oven” tombs, with an access shaft leading to one or two burial chambers. Many were used for multiple burials. Askoi, salt-cellar-shaped vessels characteristic of the tradition, were recovered from the tombs. The arrangement of bones and grave goods indicates that the chambers were reopened and reused.
Tomb of the Diver
The Tomb of the Diver dates to the first half of the fifth century BC, approximately 470 BC. It was discovered on 3 June 1968 in a small necropolis about 1.5 kilometres south of the ancient walls. The underside of its covering slab depicts a young man diving into water, while the four side walls show scenes from a symposium, a formal drinking gathering.
The paintings were made in true fresco. The tomb is described as the only surviving complete example of Greek tomb painting with figured human scenes from the Orientalizing, Archaic, or Classical periods. Its paintings are now displayed in the museum. Their meaning has been interpreted either as a passage from life to the realm of the dead or as a rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood.
Lucanian painted tombs
Most of Paestum’s other painted tombs belong to the Lucanian period. Their surviving scenes include figures, horses, and equestrian contests. Funerary assemblages contain locally produced ceramics associated with artists such as Assteas and Python, providing evidence for the artistic and material culture of Lucanian Paistom.
Museum collections and preservation
The National Archaeological Museum contains finds from Paestum and the surrounding necropoleis. Its collections include the Sele metopes, the paintings from the Tomb of the Diver, the contents of the heroon, funerary goods, weapons, painted tomb slabs, architectural terracottas, terracotta figurines, incomplete larger terracotta sculptures, and painted vases.
The museum also preserves architectural fragments from the temples, including painted terracotta from the Temple of Athena and polychrome terracotta lioness heads from the Temple of Hera. These objects complement the surviving buildings, whose ancient decoration often depended on painted terracotta as well as stone.
The principal temples are unusually well-preserved examples of Doric architecture in Magna Graecia. Their columns have pronounced entasis and broad capitals. The buildings used relatively little marble, while painted terracotta supplied architectural details and decoration. Across the site, the central area remains largely free of modern construction, although modern roads cut through parts of the ancient remains and several areas are reduced or buried.
