Three temples older than the Parthenon — the Greeks in southern Italy
Paestum (ancient Poseidonia) is one of the best-preserved ancient Greek sites in the world — three Doric temples built between 550 and 450 BC stand in an open field near the Tyrrhenian Sea in Campania. Unlike Athens, there are no crowds and no scaffolding: you walk right up to the honey-coloured limestone Temple of Hera (the oldest, 550 BC), the Temple of Neptune (the best preserved, 450 BC), and the Temple of Ceres (500 BC). The museum holds the extraordinary 'Tomb of the Diver' frescoes — the only complete Greek figurative painting to survive from the Classical period.
Paestum was founded as Poseidonia around 600 BC by Greek colonists from Sybaris in Magna Graecia (Greater Greece in southern Italy). It flourished for 200 years before conquest by the Lucanians around 400 BC, who renamed it Paiston. The Romans captured it in 273 BC and renamed it Paestum. The city was abandoned in the early medieval period after repeated malaria epidemics and Saracen raids; the temples were then lost in undergrowth and forgotten until the construction of a road through them in the 18th century. Rediscovery caused great excitement among Neoclassical artists.