PAESTUM, WHERE THE MEDITERRANEAN REMEMBERS

Musings of The Grandma...

There are places you visit. And then there are places that seem to recognise you. Paestum is one of them.

I had visited it several times before, always arriving by car. I knew the road, the landscape, the approach, and the extraordinary moment when the ancient temples began to emerge from the Mediterranean countryside. But one year, when my friend Claire Fontaine travelled with me through Campania, I decided to show her Paestum without telling her where we were going. I wanted her to discover it. We took the train and got off at Paestum station. And then, for the first time, I realised that there was a small problem. I had always arrived by car. I knew where Paestum was. I simply wasn't entirely sure how to get there from the railway station. So I did what generations of travellers had done before smartphones, GPS and Google Maps: I looked at the sun, tried to work out where the sea was, and confidently started walking.

About one or two hundred metres later, I had to confess. "I don't actually know where we are." Claire was not particularly impressed. Especially because it was very hot. We continued walking. And then, suddenly, we crossed a small pine grove. And there they were. The temples. I will never forget Claire's face. "Oh my God." It was not the reaction of someone looking at a collection of archaeological ruins. It was the reaction of someone suddenly  confronted with something extraordinarily beautiful. Something ancient. Something that had survived.

There, beneath the Campanian sun, stood the monumental Greek temples of Paestum, astonishingly preserved after more than two thousand years. And there were hardly any people around. For a moment, it felt as though we had discovered them ourselves.

Paestum was originally founded by the Greeks as Poseidonia, probably towards the end of the 7th century BC. It was part of the extraordinary Greek presence in southern Italy that we call Magna Graecia -Megálē Hellás, Greater Greece. This is one of the things that makes southern Italy so fascinating. The ancient Mediterranean was never a collection of isolated civilisations. It was a network. People travelled. They sailed. They traded. They founded cities. They carried their gods, languages, artistic traditions, architectural ideas, food and customs with them.

The Greeks reached the shores of southern Italy and Sicily and established communities that became some of the most remarkable centres of the ancient Mediterranean. Poseidonia was one of them. Later, the city came under Lucanian control and eventually became a Roman colony, receiving the name Paestum. And yet, standing there today, it is the Greek character of the place that overwhelms you.

The temples are impossible to ignore. They dominate the landscape not because they are surrounded by modern buildings or monuments, but precisely because they are not. They stand among fields, trees and Mediterranean vegetation. The landscape has not completely surrendered to the city. And perhaps that is why Paestum feels so powerful.

Paestum's three great Greek temples are among the best-preserved Doric temples anywhere in the ancient world. 

The building traditionally known as the Temple of Hera, the great temple traditionally called the Temple of Neptune, and the Temple of Athena form an extraordinary architectural ensemble. Their traditional names, however, should be treated with some caution. Archaeologists have debated the precise identities of the deities to whom the temples were dedicated, and the evidence does not always allow us to be certain. But perhaps that uncertainty makes them even more fascinating. Because what remains is not simply the name of a god. What remains is the physical expression of a civilisation. Columns. Stone. Proportion. Light. Geometry. Space. And an extraordinary understanding of how architecture can transform the relationship between human beings and the landscape.

The temples do not simply occupy the landscape. They converse with it. Claire and I spent more than three hours there. We sat beneath a large olive tree, close to one of the temples. I don't remember which one. But I remember the shade. I remember the heat. I remember the silence. And I remember looking at those stones and feeling something that is difficult to explain. It was not simply admiration for ancient architecture. It was something closer to pride. An external pride in what we were seeing. And an internal pride in what we are. Mediterranean. 

Proudly Mediterranean.

Because the Mediterranean is not merely a sea. It is a cultural space. A meeting place. A crossroads that has connected people for thousands of years. Its shores speak different languages, belong to different countries and have developed very different histories. And yet there are things that repeatedly connect them. The landscape. The light. The olive tree. The vine. The sea. The markets. The food. The architecture. The way people occupy public space. The sound of voices in the streets. The music. The relationship with death. The relationship with family. The extraordinary ability to sit around a table for hours. We may disagree about almost everything. But sometimes, beneath all those differences, there is something recognisable. Something Mediterranean.

We often look at maps and see borders. Ancient people saw routes. The sea that separates us today was also the sea that connected people yesterday. Greek ships crossed it. Phoenician ships crossed it. Roman ships crossed it. Merchants, sailors, soldiers, philosophers, migrants and travellers crossed it. Ideas crossed it. Religions crossed it. Recipes crossed it. Words crossed it. Music crossed it. Civilisations crossed it.  And they left traces of themselves on shores that today belong to completely different nations. That is why I have always found the concept of Mare Nostrum fascinating.

The Romans called the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum -"Our Sea"- after establishing control over much of its coastline. But perhaps today we should be careful with the possessive. It is not really our sea. It belongs to all the people who have lived around it. To Greeks and Italians. To Catalans and Sicilians. To Andalusians and Provençals. To Maltese and Tunisians. To Croats and Albanians. To Egyptians and Lebanese. To Turks and Cypriots. To countless peoples whose histories have been intertwined by this enormous blue space. The Mediterranean does not belong to one civilisation. It is one of the places where civilisations met. And Paestum is one of its most beautiful testimonies.

Perhaps this is why I feel that Paestum deserves to be remembered not merely as an archaeological site, but as a symbol of Hellenism. Hellenism is sometimes reduced to marble statues, philosophers and temples. But it was much more than that. It was a way of understanding the world. An extraordinary intellectual, artistic and cultural tradition that travelled far beyond mainland Greece. And southern Italy became one of its great homes.

Walking through Paestum, you realise that the Greek world was not something distant, confined to the Aegean. It was here. In Campania. On the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Under the same Mediterranean sun that shines today. And perhaps that is what makes the experience so overwhelming. You are not simply looking at the past. You are looking at one of the foundations of the cultural landscape in which we still live.

I often think about that olive tree. There was nothing particularly monumental about it. It wasn't a temple. It wasn't a column. It wasn't a piece of sculpture. It was simply an olive tree. But it gave us shade. And for three hours, Claire and I sat beneath it looking at the temples. The irony is beautiful. The temples had survived for more than two thousand years. The olive tree belonged to the living landscape. And for a few hours, we occupied the space between them. Ancient stone behind us. Living tree above us. Mediterranean light everywhere.

It felt almost like being temporarily inserted into a very long story. A story that had begun long before us and would continue long after we had left.

That first sight of Paestum was, quite simply, a cultural slap in the face. A magnificent one. And perhaps I needed it. Because there is something wonderfully humbling about standing in front of something built by people who lived more than two thousand years ago and realising that their sense of proportion, beauty and permanence can still leave us speechless. We like to think of ourselves as modern. Connected. Advanced. Unprecedented. And then we arrive at Paestum. And a column looks at us. And suddenly our sense of importance becomes slightly smaller. Not insignificant. Just... smaller. And I think that is a good thing. Ancient places can teach us humility.

I wanted Claire to see a magical place. Instead, Paestum reminded both of us that magic does not always need to be invented. Sometimes it is already there. It has simply been waiting for us. We walked there through the heat, slightly lost, following the sun and trying to find the sea. And then a small pine grove opened. And beyond it stood the temples. Thousands of years old. Silent. Beautiful. Still standing. Claire looked at them and said: "Oh my God." I understood exactly what she meant. Because sometimes there are no better words.

Paestum is not simply a place where the past has survived. It is a place where the Mediterranean still speaks. Through its stone. Through its olive trees. Through its light. Through its silence. And through the people who continue to stand beneath that sun, looking at those temples and feeling, perhaps without even knowing why, that they are looking at something that belongs to all of us. Not because we own it. But because we are part of the same sea of history. The same light. The same cultural memory. The same Mediterranean.

Proudly Mediterranean.

And, just for a moment, very small beneath those enormous stones.

More information: Paestum Velia

Πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος

Man is the measure of all things.

Protagoras