Qualla: Paestum

Paestum: Introduction

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paestum, CC BY-SA 4.0. For two centuries, anyone who wanted to stand before a Greek temple had a problem: Greece was inside the Ottoman Empire. So the Grand Tourists of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries came here instead -- to a flat, mosquito-plagued plain south of Salerno where three Doric temples stood in near-perfect condition, their honey-colored columns still holding up limestone entablatures that Athens had long since lost. Paestum was not a substitute for Greece. It was better preserved than anything Greece had left.

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Image: Paestum | CC BY-SA 4.0

Paestum: Three Temples, Twenty-Five Centuries

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Berthold Werner, CC BY-SA 3.0. The temples at Paestum span a hundred years of Greek architectural evolution, and walking south to north reads like a textbook come to life. The oldest, the Temple of Hera I, dates to around 550 BC and is wider than most Greek temples, with nine columns across its front and eight...

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Image: Berthold Werner | CC BY-SA 3.0

Paestum: A City Named and Renamed

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Golfodisalerno, CC BY-SA 4.0. Greek colonists from Sybaris founded the settlement around 600 BC, calling it Poseidonia after the god of the sea. For two centuries it thrived as a Greek city-state, complete with an Ekklesiasterion -- a sunken circular assembly hall large enough for 500 citizens -- proving that...

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Image: Golfodisalerno | CC BY-SA 4.0

Paestum: What the Graves Revealed

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Miguel Hermoso Cuesta, CC BY-SA 3.0. Among Paestum's most startling discoveries is the Heroon, a Greek memorial tomb from around 520 BC, found in 1952 buried in the middle of the settlement -- an unusual location that suggests the person interred was of extraordinary significance. Intact vases recovered from the tom...

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Image: Miguel Hermoso Cuesta | CC BY-SA 3.0

Paestum: Mozzarella and the Modern Plain

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Poul Krogsgård, CC0. Step outside the archaeological park and the landscape shifts abruptly from antiquity to agriculture. The flat Campanian plain surrounding Paestum is home to water buffalo farms that produce Mozzarella di Bufala Campana -- a cheese with protected designation of origin status and ...

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Image: Poul Krogsgård | CC0