Second Temple of Hera, Paestum
In the Greek colony of Poseidonia in southern Italy three Doric temples still stand almost complete. The second Temple of Hera, long called the Temple of Poseidon, is the best preserved. The columns are thick and the capitals broad – an early, powerful Doric order that shocked 18th-century travellers who had expected something more elegant.
Poseidonia was founded around 600 BC by Greeks from Sybaris further south. The city grew rich on trade and agriculture and built three large Doric temples. The second Temple of Hera was erected around 460 BC, roughly a generation before the Parthenon. The builder is unknown, as is the god to whom the temple was actually dedicated; scholars have suggested Hera, Zeus and Apollo. The material is not marble but a local limestone, travertine, which is porous and coarse. The surface was therefore originally covered with a thin layer of white stucco that smoothed out the stone and could be painted. What is seen today as a warm, golden-brown stone was thus meant to look pale and smooth.
The temple has six columns on the short sides and fourteen on the long sides, a common Doric plan. The columns are massive, strongly tapering and have a pronounced swelling, and the broad capitals give a heavy impression. Inside the cella two rows of columns stand in two storeys, one above the other, which supported the roof. It is one of few Greek temples where such an internal colonnade survives, and it shows how the central nave was constructed. In front of the cella is a porch, the pronaos, and behind it a corresponding rear porch. The temple stands next to the older so-called Basilica, the first Temple of Hera, and further away lies the Temple of Athena. Together they show the development of the Doric order over a century.
The Romans made the city a colony in 273 BC and called it Paestum. In the early Middle Ages the plain turned to marsh, malaria spread and the inhabitants abandoned the city. The temples were almost forgotten until a road was built through the area in the mid-18th century. Travellers, artists and architects flocked there, and Piranesi’s etchings spread the image of the temples across Europe. Many were horrified by the crude forms; others saw in them an original, honest architecture. Among the enthusiasts was Carl August Ehrensvärd, who visited Paestum on his Italian journey in the 1780s and afterwards championed a severe, heavy Doric style in Sweden. Paestum thus became important for early neoclassicism’s interest in the archaic. Today the site is part of a World Heritage Site.