Paestum Greek Temples

Founded around 600 BC by Greek colonists as Poseidonia, Paestum boasts three of the best-preserved Doric temples in the world, built between about 550 and 450 BC and dedicated to Hera and Athena. Taken over by Romans, then gradually abandoned as the surrounding plain turned to malarial marsh in the early Middle Ages, the site was swallowed by dense vegetation and largely forgotten for a millennium. Its rediscovery in the 18th century, during road-building, astonished Grand Tour travellers and influenced Neoclassical architecture across Europe. The nearby museum holds the 'Tomb of the Diver' (c. 470 BC), the only surviving Greek painting of a human figure from this era, showing a youth diving into water—an enigmatic image of the passage to the afterlife.