City once beautiful, a masterpiece of Magna Graecia and Paestum, now World Heritage Sites. With the name of Poseidon, the city of Neptune, the god of the sea, the settlers of Sybaris, founded in the seventh century BC and soon became a rich and thriving city that made a covenant with the Etruscans. Around 400 BC, however, fell into the hands of Lucani, who changed the name, which became Paistom or Paistos and finally Rome, founded a Latin colony, finally gave the name of Paestum.

The city was shining, and Rome, as a reward for his loyalty even in war, granted the privilege of minting its own coins. The Romans are to be grandiose public buildings constructed in the city: the Temple Italic, a forum, baths and amphitheater. With the advent of Christianity also Paestum had many martyrs, especially at the time of heavy persecution of Diocletian.

The decay began mainly as a result of bradyseism, the phenomenon of raising and lowering the water level that has always characterized the bell like that, due to silting, it became a malarial area and the water pushed forward in the mountains the people who founded the town of Capaccio.

In medieval times was populated by only a few Christians who had founded their own center of worship around the temple of Ceres, which was converted into a church to this fact it owes its preservation. These residents also fled to the mountains when they came in the ninth century the Saracens.

The decline of the city was final when he fell into oblivion and Paestum in the eleventh century, as was customary at the time, all their temples were stripped first by Roger and then by the Norman Robert Guiscard in order to use the precious fabric of the building site Cathedral of Salerno.

The first excavations began in the eighteenth century and began to bring to light the majestic structure that today we can admire in all their glory: the walls, four temples, three Doric and Italian, the amphitheater, the Via Sacra, the baths and of course districts inhabited by the population. The city lies in the walls has a special form of an irregular pentagon: The Thistle and the Decumano, the two main streets intersecting at the center of town.

Today the archaeological site offers a very attractive location and inside allows you to follow the city wall, or even visit the museum with findings made in the same city and those coming from the nearby necropolis. Of great impact are the most ancient monuments like the temple of Paestum believe a basilica, but in fact dedicated to the goddess Hera, the temple of Neptune, protector of the city, the agora, the Italian and the Temple of Ceres.

The city offers itself in all its beauty still hold today, in spite of any natural disaster and being able to offer more excitement and had to give its former glory.