Campania is a wonderful land that can offer a lot to its visitors both for the scenic beauty it has, and for the many monuments of great interest from an architectural, historical and artistic point of view.
A destination that should certainly be included in excursions in the province of Salerno, are the temples of Paestum. A wonderful area where you can admire structures dating back to the era of Magna Graecia, in which a little all of southern Italy was influenced from an artistic and cultural point of view by ancient Greece.
The most fascinating temple in Paestum is certainly that of Hera, which is also the oldest. A stone built basilica whose princely works date back to the year 560 BC. It is called a basilica, due to the fact that, despite the many studies carried out, it has not yet been possible to unequivocally understand its function, even if it is thought that it is certainly a cult building. Among other things, thanks to some recent works, it was possible to break down real architectural barriers that did not allow you to visit this temple in its internal part.
Furthermore, in this area there is also the magnificent temple dedicated to Athena that was venerated as a goddess of craftsmanship and war. It is located in a strategic point as it is located in the highest area of the city of Paestum, but which allowed to dominate the entire valley. The columns have been decorated in a classic Ionic style.
Here you can also admire the temple of Neptune also known to be the largest from the point of view of the surface extension. Probably, it is also the best preserved, so much so that you can visit it optimally in all its areas. According to scholars, it dates back to the fifth century BC, roughly in the period in which at Olympia, in Greece, a famous temple of Zeus was built which, however, has been preserved in a less optimal way over the centuries. Inside, the walls of the internal body are missing, that is, what in technical jargon is called as a cell. This is related to the need of the inhabitants, during the medieval period, to use these large stones to build fortifications that allowed to protect from possible assaults by enemy armies. It is possible, however, to clearly see the internal structure of the temple which involved a division into three naves with two colonnades on two floors obviously superimposed on each other. As for the roofs, as happened for other temples, this also involves the use of a wooden structure specially designed and built.
