Paestum

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View of the Heraion (in the foreground) and the "Temple of Poseidon" in Paestum; here the difference between archaic and classic can be seen clearly.
Map of the ruins of Paestum (1732)

Paestum ( Italian Paestum ) is a as a UNESCO - World Heritage Site recognized archaeological site in the region of Campania in the province of Salerno in Italy . The place belongs to the municipality of Capaccio .

Location and dates

The place is on a plain about 35 km south of Salerno . It was created 2 km from the Mediterranean coast. This shows that the Greeks did not want to build a port as a trading base here, but that they had in mind the cultivation of the fertile soil. It is protected behind a lagoon where the harbor was probably located in the past. To the east and south, Paestum is delimited by the Cilento mountains. In the north there is a natural barrier with sele .

history

Basilica / Hera Temple

Antiquity

The city was named Poseidonia around 600 BC. Founded by Greeks from Sybaris or Troizen . The place is thus a colony of a colony, a so-called planting city, Greek apoikia. The fertile landscape and extensive trade led to prosperity within a few generations, which increased in the 5th and 6th centuries BC. In the construction of large temples, the ruins of which have been preserved to this day. Around 400 BC Chr. Conquered Lucanians the city and named it into Paistos. Possibly, however, it was simply a matter of merging the colonist culture cut off from home with indigenous forms of culture.

274-273 BC In the course of the conquest of Campania by the Romans, the city became the Latin Colonia under the name Paestum . In doing so, they paid little attention to old customs and traditions. There have been major changes and possibly extensive population exchanges. During the Roman Empire, Paestum lost its wealth and importance.

Decay and Rediscovery

Around 500 AD the site began to silt up and slowly become marshy, the malaria spread and the last residents left the place. The temple complex turned into a kind of jungle, the place was forgotten, as it were. After being destroyed by the Saracens in the 9th century and by the Normans in the 11th century , Paestum was abandoned. The decline was accelerated by the swamping of the surrounding area and the resulting risk of malaria . To avoid malaria, the residents moved to higher areas and founded the town of Capaccio.

Reconstruction of the Temple of Poseidon after an engraving from Pierer's Universal Lexicon 1891
Temple of Poseidon 2013
Temple of Poseidon and Heraion in Paestum, watercolor by Y. Gianni 1898

Paestum was not rediscovered until 1752, roughly at the same time as Pompeii and Herculaneum . The discovery caused a sensation at the time. An expedition into the enchanted swampy landscape was soon part of the program of the art-loving educational traveler on the so-called Grand Tour .

Attractions

Athena temple

Paestum has significant architectural monuments from the Greek and Roman times. The three large Doric temples are of particular importance, each of which is an example of a building era in the Doric architectural style .

The archaic temple of Hera (around 540 BC) - called the basilica - was one of the largest Greek stone temples ever built.

The Temple of Athena (around 510 BC), formerly also attributed to Ceres , is considerably smaller. What is particularly striking about it is that this actually Doric temple has some stylistic elements that do not belong in the canon of Doric architecture. It has decorative elements at the top of the architrave and also in the geison , which belong more to Ionic entablature.

Finally, the so-called Poseidon Temple (around 450 BC) - this too was actually dedicated to Hera - shows the mature design of the recently built Temple of Zeus at Olympia .

Public buildings from Roman times have also been preserved, such as a small Roman amphitheater and the meeting place of the citizens, the Comitium , as well as the 4.75 km long city wall, on which Lukan and Roman construction phases can be recognized. The four great city gates are Roman.

museum

Diver's grave
Illustration of a symposium in the diver's grave

The National Archaeological Museum in Paestum exhibits an important collection of Greek antiquities from southern Italy. Finds from the area around Paestum are exhibited, mainly grave finds from Greek and Lucanian necropolises . Among them are many vases, weapons and painted stone slabs that served as coffin lids or side walls. The representations from the grave of the high diver ( grave of the diver ) , which interpret the transition from life to the realm of the dead as the jump of the diver into the water, should be emphasized . The museum has, among other things, painted grave slabs from the grave of the colorful rooster , the grave of the white cock , the grave of the piebalds , the grave of the pomegranates , the grave of the funeral games , the grave of the black knight , the grave of mother and child , the grave of the mourners , the grave of the deer hunt , the grave of the returning knight , the grave of the fighting animals , the grave of the Nereid and the grave of the mule cart . The weighty exhibits are on display on the ground floor of the museum.

The director of the museum has been the German classical archaeologist Gabriel Zuchtriegel , whose contract runs until the end of 2023, since 2015 .

Paestum in literature

Johann Wolfgang Goethe visited Paestum during his Italian trip on March 23, 1787, 35 years after his rediscovery. He writes about it:

“The land became flatter and more desolate, few buildings indicated sparse agriculture. Finally, uncertain whether we were leading through rocks or rubble, we were able to distinguish some large oblong, square masses that we had already noticed in the distance as surviving temples and monuments of a once so magnificent city [...] In the meantime I allowed myself to be a farmer Show around the buildings, the first impression could only astonish. I was in a completely alien world.

For just as the centuries develop from the serious into the pleasing, so they help to shape man, yes, they create him in this way. Now our eyes and through them our whole inner being are driven towards slimmer architecture and decidedly determined, so that these blunt, cone-shaped, tightly packed pillars appear annoying, even terrible. But I soon got myself together, remembered the history of art, remembered the time, whose spirit found such a design appropriate, brought the strict style of sculpture to mind, and in less than an hour I felt friends, yes I praised the genius that he was let me see these well-preserved remains with my eyes, as no concept of them can be given by illustration. "

- Goethe : Italian trip , entry of March 23, 1787

Even Johann Gottfried Seume visited on his trip to Italy in 1802 the city. He reports on this in his work Walk to Syracuse . Among other things, he wanted the Virgil 50 BC there. He found the roses described in BC , but he was denied:

“I stayed here for only two hours, bypassed the area of ​​the city in which there are nothing but the three well-known large, old buildings, the apartment of the monsignor, a bishop, I hear, a miserable inn and another miserable house . This is now all of the past. Here I thought to myself Schiller's girl from abroad; but neither the giver nor the gifts were in the destroyed paradise. Now in the rose season, I was looking for roses in Pästum for you to bring you a classically sentimental present; but a seer cannot find a rose there. In the whole area around, one of the Monsignor's people assured me, there is no longer any rose bush. I looked through and searched everything myself, including the Lord's garden, but the barbarians did not have a single rose. I became very excited about this and thundered over the piakulum at sacred nature. The landlord, my guide, told me that six years ago there were still a few there, but the strangers had torn them all away completely. Now that was a pathetic excuse. I made him understand that the roses of Paestum had once been famous as the most beautiful on earth, that he did not have to have them torn down, that he should replant, that it would be his advantage that every stranger would be happy to pay something for a Paese rose; that, for example, I would probably give a piaster even now if I could only get one. The latter especially made sense to the man; he didn't seem to care about the beautiful nature, humanity there has sunk too deep for that. He promised to think about it, and I may have the credit that in future roses will be found again in Paestum, at least I would like to ask everyone to repeat the same memories urgently until they bear fruit. "

- Seume : Walk to Syracuse in 1802

literature

  • Carl Lamb , Ludwig Curtius (preface): The temples of Paestum , Leipzig, Insel-Verlag 1944 ( Insel-Bücherei 170/3).
  • Walter Paul Schussmann: Rhadamanthys in the Tomba del Tuffatore. The tomb of the mystics: a reinterpretation . Phoibos, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-85161-061-1 .
  • Christoph Höcker : Gulf of Naples and Campania. DuMont-Kunstreisführer, DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1999. Extended and updated editions: 2000; 2004; 2006; 2008 (completely revised new edition); 2011.

Web links

Wiktionary: Paestum  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Paestum  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikivoyage: Paestum  - travel guide

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dieter Mertens: Cities and Buildings of the West Greeks, Munich 2006, p. 54.
  2. ^ N. Nabers, The Athena Temple at Paestum and Pythagorean Theory , in: Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 21, 1980, p. 207.
  3. ↑ Thomas Steinfeld : In a completely different world. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . April 7, 2019, accessed April 9, 2019 .
  4. ↑ [1]
  5. ↑ Naples

Coordinates: 40 ° 25 ′ 10.8 ″  N , 15 ° 0 ′ 18.1 ″  E