← Back to the mapPiranesi's etching of the Doric temples at Paestum
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, 1778 · Wikimedia Commons

Paestum

Italia · Roman province·Italy·Founded 600 BCE (Greek Poseidonia)

A Greek colony absorbed into Rome. Its three Doric temples — 500 years old in 117 CE — were already ancient monuments.

An uninhabited UNESCO World Heritage archaeological park near Salerno, home to three of the best-preserved ancient Greek temples in the world.

Excavation history

1740s
Bourbon road-building crews — Paestum's three Greek temples, forgotten for centuries in swampland, were rediscovered when a road crew building a new highway under King Charles VII of Naples cut through the site.
1907
Vittorio Spinazzola (Superintendent) — The first officially sanctioned, systematic excavations of the site began, after it had gone without formal digging for over a century since its rediscovery.

Notable finds

Tomb of the Diver
Tomb of the Diver
Mario Napoli opened this small tomb in June 1968 to find its lid painted with a lone young man frozen mid-air over a pool of water, the only complete figured painting to survive from the Greek world of 480-470 BCE.
Paestum Archaeological Museum
Metopes of the Heraion at the Sele
Carved around 570-560 BCE for a Greek sanctuary to Hera a few miles north of the city, these stone slabs survived because a later Roman farm building was raised right on top of the ruined temple, burying and protecting them.
Paestum Archaeological Museum
Return of the Warrior
Return of the Warrior
Painted straight onto the slabs of Tomb 114 in the Andriuolo necropolis around 330-320 BCE, this fresco shows a Lucanian warrior riding home from battle, part of a local tradition of painted tombs that has no equivalent anywhere else in ancient Italy.
Paestum Archaeological Museum
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →