page_title: Paestum
section_title: Ancient ruins and features
hierarchical_section_title: Paestum / Ancient ruins and features
caption_attribution_description: Johann Joachim Winckelmann: "Storia delle arti del disegno", traduzione di Carlo Fea da: Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (Wien, 1764/1776)
context_page_description: Paestum was a major ancient Greek city on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea in Magna Graecia. The ruins of Paestum are famous for their three ancient Greek temples in the Doric order, dating from about 550 to 450 BC, which are in a very good 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 modern national museum within it, which also contains the finds from the associated Greek site of Foce del Sele.
  Solinus wrote that it was established by Dorians. After its foundation by Greek colonists under the name of Poseidonia it was eventually conquered by the local Lucanians and later the Romans. The Lucanians renamed it to Paistos and the Romans gave the city its current name. As Pesto or Paestum, the town became a bishopric, 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 modern frazione of Paestum, which is part of the comune of Capaccio Paestum in the Province of Salerno in the region of Campania, Italy.
context_section_description: Much of the most celebrated features of the site today are the three large temples in the Archaic version of the Greek Doric order, dating from about 550 to 450 BC. All are typical of the period, with massive colonnades having a very pronounced entasis (widening as they go down), and very wide capitals resembling upturned mushrooms. Above the columns, only the second Temple of Hera retains most of its entablature, the other two having only the architrave in place.
  These were dedicated to Hera, Athena, and Poseidon (Juno, Minerva, and Neptune to the Romans), although previously they often have been identified otherwise, for example, as a basilica and a temple of Ceres (Greek Demeter), after 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 for some detailed parts of the structure.  The large pieces of terracotta that have survived are in the museum.
  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 is largely intact. The walls are approximately 4.75 km (3 mi) long in its polygonal perimeter, typically 15 m (49 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-built heroon or shrine memorial to an unknown local hero survived intact; the contents are in the museum.  Numerous tombs have been excavated outside the walls.
caption: 18th century map of Paestum and its walls, with north pointing down
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