2024-01-13 16:12:41
Two Doric-style Greek temples emerged during excavations in Paestum. The discovery was made in the western area of the ancient city of Poseidonia-Paestum, close to the city walls and a few hundred meters from the sea, where a stratigraphic excavation campaign is underway. 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 starting from September 2022, dates back to the first decades of the 5th century BC, and today constitutes, due to its architectural and dimensional characteristics, an absolute unicum of Doric order temple architecture . It is preserved in the portions of the stylobate (basement of the columns) and the crepidoma (steps where the temple was built) and measures 11.60×7.60 m, with a peristasis of 4×6 columns.
However, from investigations carried out in recent weeks, the history of the sanctuary appears to be even older. Inside the temple structure, beneath the peristasis, 14 fragmentary Doric capitals and other architectural materials were reused, probably for ritual purposes. The capitals are of similar 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 demonstrate that we are faced with another temple, of modest dimensions but with architectural characteristics similar to those of the first large Paestan temples and to be dated to the 6th century BC. For reasons yet to be ascertained, perhaps a collapse, at the beginning of 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 significantly expands our knowledge of the city’s urban layout. Behind the temple, the collapse of the internal facing of the walls of the ancient city which had hit the temple, causing its partial collapse, was dismantled. Below this collapse, the route of a beaten road was identified, which runs parallel to the temple and has, however, a different orientation compared to the walls. This is an extremely interesting discovery as it documents that at the end of the 6th century BC, when the oldest temple was built, the city of Poseidonia was not yet equipped with defensive walls.
In a period of strong growth and monumentalization of the polis, the settlers 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 marks a fundamental continuity of worship throughout the Greek-Epoch Lucanian and Roman.
“The recent discoveries confirm how much there is still a lot to do in Paestum in terms of excavations, research and also in terms of valorisation. After decades of inertia, the Ministry of Culture is giving impetus to notable initiatives. We have reopened the National Archaeological Museum after important and demanding reorganization works which allow for a valuable exhibition itinerary – stated the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano – In the next few weeks I will be back in Paestum to underline the value of the redevelopment intervention, from 20 million euros, in the former Cirio factory. In recent months I also went to Velia to inaugurate the ‘Elea: the rebirth’ exhibition and guarantee an initial allocation of resources to start building the museum”.
“The new Paestan excavations are yet another demonstration of how study and research are cornerstones in the management of cultural heritage and fundamental tools of the protection and valorisation functions that the State is called upon to carry out, from a more broadly synergy between the various professionals involved in different capacities in archaeological investigations. The networking of skills, in fact, is a vehicle for improving knowledge and use of cultural heritage, with the aim of making them ‘readable’ in the eyes of an audience with different abilities, but all deserving of the same access possibilities. These are, moreover, the objectives pursued by the National Museum System, an ambitious project at national level which aims to set minimum levels of quality of valorisation for all places of culture, of which the archaeological park of Paestum and Velia, with the its intelligent policies for the care and promotion of the sites included in it, represents a virtuous example, certainly a harbinger of further future fascinating discoveries”, underlined the general director of Museums, Massimo Osanna.
“These exceptional discoveries, 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 come some decades earlier, and built in the archaic period even before the city was equipped with a defensive circuit. This is a complex excavation site that requires the collaboration of archaeologists, restorers, engineers, architects and geologists. The excavation activities will be concluded shortly and we are already working to create a new route of use that makes 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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