Puglia vacation - Day 9: Home to Rome (and Paestum)

We decided to break up the drive home from Matera -- scheduled for 5 ½ hours -- with a stop in Paestum. Josh had visited Paestum 20 years ago, but despite being nearby on our honeymoon, we didn’t see these archeological ruins opting for Pompeii instead.

Well, I sure am glad we went today. There are three magnificent Doric Greek temples on the site of what was once Poseidonia. The largest and best preserved of the three is the Temple of Neptune. The temples all date back to the 5^th and 6^th centuries B.C. There are additional archeological ruins from as late as the 1^st century A.D. by which time the area had been invaded by the Romans (in 273 B.C.) and the name changed from Poseidonia to the Latin, Paestum. Later, the town became malaria infested and the inhabitiants fled from the marshy lowlands to the nearby hillsides by the 9^th century A.D.

So there it stood for centuries, amidst thick vegetation, until in the first half of the 18^th century when the poets writers such as Goethe, Shelley, Canova and Piranesi began to visit the Greek Temples and led to their “rediscovery.”

The temples are truly spectacular; and we were incredibly fortunate that we were one of four or five families visiting the ruins on this day. We practically had the whole place to ourselves. The kids ran around and we appreciated the architectural marvel of creating these temples in 600 B. C.

We placated the kids with a gelato stop before hitting the road for Rome. We were fairly lucky with the traffic and made it home by 7pm. Dale and Don had already arrived from their cruise of the Greek islands and we sat in the kitchen, eating (what else?) pasta and swapping vacation stories. The unfortunate part is that we had to tell our tales while sitting around in our winter coats and down jackets because the heat was not working.

Welcome Home.