Unlike Pompeii and even Herculaneum, Paestum is often deserted, and its gleaming white marble temples, set against the dark brown hills and deep blue sea, provide a uniquely Greek experience in Italy.

Paestum has always been shrouded in mystery founded around 650 BC by a large group of Dorians who had been expelled from the city of Sybaris, a luxurious resort across the mainland on the Ionian Sea. The Dorians named their new colony Poseidonia, after the most important of their gods; it flourished and quickly became the greatest city on the gulf of Salerno.

Incredibly, although Paestum’s Temple of Hera (also called “of Poseidon”) was among the most famous cult-worship sites in antiquity, and the oldest, best preserved, and most beautiful Doric temple in existence today, and despite the city’s proximity to Salerno (24 miles) and Capaccio (4 miles), these majestic ruins were unknown throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance period. Although scholars had been searching for the ruins for centuries, they were not discovered until 1740 and not accurately described until 1779.

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