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 Pestano temples and 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 scope of the discovery is not limited to the architecture and history of the sanctuary but greatly expands our knowledge of the city's urban layout. Behind the temple, the collapse of the inner facing of the walls of the ancient city that had hit the temple causing a partial collapse was dismantled. Below this collapse, the route of a beaten road has been identified, which runs parallel to the temple and has, instead, a different orientation from the walls. This is an extremely interesting discovery as it documents that at the end of the sixth century BC, when the oldest temple was erected, the city of Poseidonia was not yet equipped with defensive walls.
In a period of strong growth and monumentalization of the polis, the colonists of Poseidonia built a sanctuary in a strategic place, to protect the urban space and visible directly from the sea.
The importance of this sacred space is confirmed by its complex building phases, which saw the construction of two Doric temples, and by its long and uninterrupted attendance, which for over half a millennium marked a fundamental continuity of worship through the Greek-Lucanian and Roman eras.
Sangiuliano, Paestum discoveries from commitment after decades of inertia
"Recent discoveries confirm that there is still a lot to be done in Paestum in terms of excavations, research and also in terms of valorisation. After decades of inaction, the Ministry of Culture is giving impetus to remarkable initiatives. We have reopened the National Archaeological Museum after important and demanding rearrangement works that allow for a valuable exhibition itinerary," said the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano.
In the coming weeks, the minister will be back in Paestum "to underline the value of the 20 million euro redevelopment project in the former Cirio plant. In recent months, I have also gone to Velia to inaugurate the exhibition "Elea: the rebirth" and ensure an initial allocation of resources to start building the museum."
Hosanna, study and research for heritage protection
"The new excavations in Pesta are yet another demonstration of how study and research are cornerstones in the management of cultural heritage and fundamental tools of the functions of protection and enhancement that the State is called upon to perform, in a perspective that is as widely synergistic as possible between the various professionals involved in different ways in archaeological investigations. The networking of skills, in fact, is a vehicle for improving the knowledge and use of cultural heritage, with the aim of making them 'legible' in the eyes of an audience with different abilities, but all deserving of the same access possibilities. These, moreover, are the objectives pursued by the National Museum System, an ambitious project at national level that aims to set minimum levels of quality of enhancement for all places of culture, of which the Archaeological Park of Paestum and Velia, with its intelligent policies of care and promotion of the sites included in it, represents a virtuous example, certainly a harbinger of further fascinating future finds," underlined the Director General of Museums, Massimo Osanna.
"These exceptional finds, which add new fundamental pieces to the reconstruction of the archaic history of the Magna Graecia colony of Poseidonia, document, in fact, the multiple construction phases of a sanctuary located in a liminal area, near the coast from which the colonists themselves had arrived a few decades earlier, and built in the archaic era even before the city was equipped with a defensive circuit. It is a complex excavation site that requires the collaboration of archaeologists, restorers, engineers, architects and geologists. The excavation activities will soon be completed and we are already working to create a new path of use that will make this important sanctuary accessible to the public," added the director of the Archaeological Park of Paestum and Velia, Tiziana D'Angelo.
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