Paestum is a book opened on the largeness and the universalità of the Greek culture.
But it is also the place of magical suggestions where a modulated light caress tans and frontons, pronai and porches. One history chip fixture in the infinite range
of the blueta of a sky and a sea without equal.

It is necessary to linger on in the twilight, when the shadows of the night begin to lengthen and everything from the temples to the individual stones begins to quiver. You are no longer certain whether Paestum is just a mirage or a trick of the night… and you can never get onough of that spectacle that varies light and shadows moment after moment, that illuminates and dims every corner of this skelecton city. And the wind strokes the colonnades just like the strings on a magic harp, slips imperiously through the plain , purifying this generous land. And the car headlights slide awaylike rapid meteors. Facing the sea there is thestone, for thousands of years honed by the wind,by the breeze of this sea that has given it a particular velvety consistency. And facing the stone there is the sun that lavishly endows all the shades of its itinerary, from blood red to the pale streaks of violet....
 

...Ah yes, these solemn and rough stones embody all the will-power and genius of man and represent the challenge to a dimension that must have been unique up until then in a country side dominated by the flatness of the sea and the horizon. These temples, that have survived in good state to our times-in this respect second only to Theseion in Athens- rise beyond the intact circle of the wall, the most conspicuous example of fortifications in Western Greek cities. In front of the Neptune temple there are still clumps of flowering roses that perpetuate the tradition of the bifera rosaria Paestum celebrated by Virgil and other Roman poets. These roses were also known to many foreign travellers who during their Grand Tour even went as far as Paestum , captivated by the fascination of the Greek- Roman civilization and the taste of romantic discoveries: I refer to the sketcher piranesi or the writer Goethe or the less well-known Seume who set off from Lipsia on foot and who went in search of the Paestum roses,"…Alas, in vain because they had all been torn off by the visitors…"....

...Yes, the Neptune temple, the largest, the greatest example of Doric architecture in the wole of the Western world, is the best conserved. On the local travertine, formed by calcareous deposits from the Salso river, time has spread a warm golden patina almost as if to protect it against its own damage and as if to enhance that feeling of strenght and elegance that emanates from the magnificent structure, from the perfect proportions, from the unprecedented technical solutions. ...
 

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..The other temples are perhaps less so? Certanly not: they are equally mighty but slender, equally imposing but elegant. A large flighto of steps leads up to another podium, to the Italic temple dedicated to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva that was perhaps the capitolium of the city and at the alter of which a priest no longer serves: and yet, when you are there,you expect or the music of a symphonic poem by Strauss accompanying the sun as it kindles a new day. A temple "plundered" by the Normans when they carried away six columns for a chamber in the archbishop’s palace at Salerno to support the roof beams.

Slightly further on, a clump of pine-trees forms a crown around a clearing containing the temple of Ceres, with slender proportions that do not seem to match the deeply radicated cult of the goddess Athena to wich, in reality this temple is dedicated. It is however impossible toescape the subtle fascination of these monuments, called upon to be a witness of time, to assimilate their history: you can play the memory game midst the echoes of a couple of thousand years that chastely brush against the columns cojuring up ever new alluring enchantments....

from: http://www.comune.capaccio.sa.it

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