Paestum
UNESCO World Heritage Site (Cilento And Vallo Di Diano National Park With The Archaeological Sites Of Paestum And Velia And The Certosa Di Padula, Inscribed 1998) · Capaccio Paestum, Campania
Three Greek temples stand in a field an hour south of Salerno, and two of them are among the best preserved anywhere in the world, better than almost anything left in Greece itself. They are Doric, heavy, close-spaced and enormous, built by colonists in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, and they survived because the city around them was abandoned to malaria and then simply forgotten under scrub until a road was cut through in the eighteenth century. You walk among them on open ground with no barriers and very few people. The museum beside the site holds the Tomb of the Diver, a painted slab of about 470 BC showing a man in mid-dive, which is the only surviving Greek figure painting of its kind from this period anywhere. Behind all of it is a working buffalo-mozzarella country and a long empty beach, which is a strange and very good combination for a day. Come at opening, walk the walls afterwards, and you will have had one of the great ancient sites almost to yourself.
Via Magna Grecia 919, Capaccio Paestum, Campania, 84047, Italy
ALL TIMES UNVERIFIED FOR THIS ROW. Broadly: the archaeological park opens daily from mid-morning with a last admission an hour before closing, running late in summer and shutting much earlier in winter. The museum keeps the same days with one weekly closing day and closes over the middle of some days. Both shut on 1 January, 1 May and 25 December. The state-museum free first Sunday applies. Velia and the Certosa di Padula keep their own separate hours. Confirm before travelling.