Paestum (/ˈpɛstəm/ PEST-əm,[1] US also /ˈpiːstəm/ PEE-stəm,[2][3] Latin: [ˈpae̯stũː]) 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 that are in an excellent state of preservation.

[4] As Pesto or Paestum, the town became a bishopric (now only titular), but it was abandoned in the Early Middle Ages, and left undisturbed and largely forgotten until the eighteenth century.

The modern settlement, directly to the south of the archaeological site, is a popular seaside resort with long sandy beaches.

[5] 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,[6] with massive colonnades having a very pronounced entasis (widening as they go down), and very wide capitals resembling upturned mushrooms.

A low-built heroon or shrine memorial to an unknown local hero survived intact; the contents are in the museum.

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.

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.

[13] The heroön, 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.

[13] Just south of the city walls, at a site still called Santa Venera, a series of small terracotta offertory molded statuettes of a standing nude woman wearing the polos headdress of Anatolian and Syrian goddesses, which were dated to the first half of the sixth century BC, were found in the sanctuary.

[14] The open-air temenos was established at the start of Greek occupation: a temple on the site was not built until the early fifth century BC.

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.

Among the thousands of Greek tombs known from this time (roughly 700–400 BC), this is the only one found to have been decorated with frescoes of human subjects.

The National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid has especially rich holdings, with two important Imperial Roman statues and many, very fine vases (see below).

In the case of painted pottery, a number of individual artists, especially from the fourth century BC, have been identified and given notnames whose work has been found in tombs around the city and the region, and sometimes farther afield.

The highlights of the National Archaeological Museum of Paestum are mentioned above: the Sele metopes, the Tomb of the Diver, and the contents of the Heroon.

The colonists had built fortifications close to the sea, but then decided to found the city farther inland at a higher elevation.

[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 with Metaponto in the sixth and fifth centuries.

A. J. Graham thinks it was plausible that the number of refugees was large enough for some kind of synoecism to have occurred between the Poseidonians and the Sybarites, possibly in the form of a sympolity.

During the Carthaginian invasion of Italy by Hannibal, the city remained faithful to Rome and afterward, was granted special favours such as the minting of its own coinage.

By the time of Virgil the city was "known for roses that bloomed twice a year", as he mentions in Book IV of his Georgics (c. 29 BC).

The Paestum site became overgrown and largely forgotten, although some stone spolia were collected and used in Salerno Cathedral by Robert Guiscard (d. 1085).

Despite stray mentions such as that in the history of Pietro 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 of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and during the construction of a new coastal road south from Naples.

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 accurate etchings, published in 1778; these and other prints were widely circulated.

Initially, eighteenth-century savants doubted that the structures had been temples, and it was suggested variously, that they included a gymnasium, a public basilica or hall, or a "portico".

Alessio Simmaco Mazzocchi, a clergyman and antiquarian, "the founder of the modern study of Magna Graecia" (the ancient Greeks in Italy),[31] thought they were Etruscan, in line with his theories that Greek colonists merely had joined existing cultures in Italy, founded by peoples from farther east.

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.