In Paestum, two new Doric temples have been discovered in the archaeological park. This was announced by the Mic.
In the western area of the ancient city of Poseidonia-Paestum, close to the city walls and a few hundred meters from the sea, a stratigraphic excavation campaign is underway that has brought to light two Greek temples of Doric style.
These sacred buildings shed new light on the origins and urban development of the Magna Graecia polis and provide crucial data for understanding the evolution of Doric architecture in Poseidonia and Magna Graecia. The first temple, initially intercepted in June 2019 and investigated since September 2022, dates back to the first decades of the fifth century BC, and to date constitutes, in terms of architectural and dimensional characteristics, an absolute unicum of Templar architecture of the Doric order. It is preserved in the portions of the stylobate (base of the columns) and the crepidoma (steps where the temple was built) and measures 11.60x7.60 m., with a peristasis of 4x6 columns. From investigations carried out in recent weeks, however, the history of the shrine seems to be even older.
Inside the temple structure, below the peristasis, 14 fragmentary Doric capitals and other architectural materials have been reused, probably for ritual purposes. The capitals are similar in size to those of the small temple explored so far. The typology is, however, different and comparable with that of the capitals of the temple of Hera I, the so-called "Basilica", the oldest of the three major temples of Paestum. These latest exceptional discoveries - reads the Mic note - show that we are facing another temple, of modest size but with architectural characteristics similar to those of the first great Pestanie temples to be dated to the sixth century BC. For reasons yet to be ascertained, perhaps a collapse, at the beginning of the following century this structure was replaced, in the same area, by a new temple. The magnitude of the discovery greatly expands our knowledge of the city's urban layout.
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