The city has been inhabited since prehistoric times. To the east of the Basilica, in the area facing the entrance, artifacts dating from the Palaeolithic age to the Bronze Age have been found; south of it, towards Porta Giustizia, the remains of huts have been discovered, testifying to the existence of a prehistoric settlement. In the area of the Temple of Ceres, and between it and Porta Aurea, archaeological evidence has been found documenting a settlement from the Neolithic age. In fact, both the Basilica and the Temple of Ceres are located on two slight hills (probably more accentuated in prehistoric times), so it can be imagined that they were occupied by two villages, separated by a small stream that flowed where today is the Hole. Perhaps in the Eenolithic era the two hills were inhabited by the population of Aegean-Anatolian origin belonging to the facies of the Civilization of Gaudo, who then chose the locality Gaudo, located 1.5 kilometers north of Paestum as a privileged place for his burials.
Foundation
We do not have precise information on the foundation of the city, but it could be hypothesized that it was founded by a minority of Dori Sibariti, expelled by the Achaean majority. From the contextual archaeological data, a plausible reconstruction of the picture that led to the birth of the city can be attempted: towards the middle of the seventh century BC, the city of Sibari began to create a series of "sub-colonies" along the Tyrrhenian coast, with functions commercial: they include Laos [4] and a port, the northernmost, at the mouth of the Sele, where a sanctuary dedicated to Hera was founded, probably with an emporic value [5]. The Sybarites arrived in the Sele plain through internal roads that connected it to the Ionian Sea. Thanks to an intense commercial traffic that took place both by sea - coming into contact with the Greek, Etruscan and Latin world [6] - and by land - trading with the local populations of the plain and with the Italic ones in the internal valleys - in the second half of VII century BC the settlement developed quickly which then had to give rise to Poseidonia, the development of the city certainly accelerated also by a precise urbanization project. A necropolis, discovered in 1969 just outside the city walls, containing exclusively Greek Corinthian vases, attests that the polis must have been alive already around the year 625 BC.
Rediscovery and excavations
Crater of Assteas (Naples, National Archaeological Museum) With the abandonment of Paestum, only a vague memory of the ancient city remained. In the Renaissance period, various writers and poets mentioned Paestum, while ignoring its exact location, placing it in Agropoli or even in Policastro; they were mainly erudite quotations from Virgil, Ovid and Propertius, which recalled the beauty and scent of the Pestane roses that bloomed twice in a year. In the sixteenth century, however, the site began to experience a new phase of life, with the formation of a tiny center hinged on the church of the Annunziata. Only at the beginning of the eighteenth century did we begin to find erudite hints, in descriptive works of the Kingdom of Naples, of three "theaters" or "amphitheaters" located a short distance from the Sele river.
Following the opening by Carlo di Borbone of the current SS18, which divided the amphitheater into two parts, the definitive rediscovery of the ancient city took place. Thus the first reliefs of the temples were created and published, engravings and prints depicting the temples and places, drawings and sketches of the admired visitors who were gradually increasing. Famous are the splendid tables by Piranesi (1778), by Paoli (1784), by Saint Non (1786). The art historian Winckelmann drew attention to the monuments of Pesta, Goethe evocatively represented the romantic encounter with Paestum, with its solemn and evocative ruins, silent witnesses immersed in the desolation of the Pestanian plain. However, this widespread interest was not followed by research and excavation campaigns, due to the limestone bank formed over the millennia by precipitation from the waters of the Salso: covering everything, it had convinced scholars and archaeologists that the ancient city, in addition to temples, nothing had been preserved. It was only at the beginning of the twentieth century that, recognizing a recent formation in the bench, the first excavations were undertaken: between 1907 and 1914 investigations interested the area of the "Basilica", moving towards the Forum; between 1925 and 1938 the excavations of the Forum were completed - with the identification of the so-called "Temple of Peace", the comitium, via di Porta Marina, and the amphitheater - and the research around the Temple of Ceres intensified; The excavation of the walls was therefore completed, partly restored with questionable criteria, and the so-called Porta Marina and Porta Giustizia were identified. On 9 September 1943, Paestum was affected, together with the place called Laura, by the landings of the allied forces, following the disembarkation in Salerno. After the Second World War the systematic excavations of the city had a strong impulse: in the fifties the investigations of the areas around the temples were deepened, leading to the recovery of the votive cabinets of the "Basilica" and the "Temple of Neptune"; the "Temple of Ceres" was freed from the later superfatuations, according to the then prevailing conception of archeology aimed at discovering the classical phases at the expense of the later ones. In 1954 the underground chapel was discovered. More recent was the identification of the insulae to the west of the Via Sacra, making it possible to understand some elements of the inhabited area of the ancient city, its urban layout and its building development. Between the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies, the numerous and very rich necropolis of Paestum were systematically excavated, allowing the recovery not only of extraordinary and almost unique works, such as the Tomb of the Diver, but also of the rich funerary objects with the splendid locally produced ceramics, the work of renowned artists such as Assteas, Python and the so-called Painter of Aphrodite.
