Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 09:09:55 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Has the Location of the Center City of Atlantis Been Identified?
http://www.mysterious-america.net/hasatlantisbeenf.html
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

MAGNA GRAECIA

Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: MAGNA GRAECIA  (Read 9929 times)
0 Members and 94 Guests are viewing this topic.
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« Reply #120 on: June 09, 2009, 08:54:03 pm »



Buildings rise up from the emerald coast of Salerno, Italy, a center of mozzarella di bufala production along with Caserta farther inland in the Campania region.

(Gaetano Barone
/Corbis)








                                                           Beautiful, unspoiled Paestum






LA Times
By Susan Spano,
Reporting from Paestum,
Italy
May 08, 2009

Even if there were no fresh mozzarella cheese on the wide plain that edges the Gulf of Salerno in southern Campania, the Greek ruins of Paestum would be reason enough for coming here.

Paestum was settled around 600 BC as part of a wave of Greek expansion that created a chain of colonies,
known as Magna Graecia, around the Mediterranean basin. Now it's one of the most intriguing archaeological
sites in Italy, visible proof of the subsequent Roman Empire's classical Hellenic foundations. It's still unspoiled
enough to make modern-day visitors feel like discoverers.

Paestum's three huge, elegant, breathtaking Doric-columned Greek temples loom above the plain about five
miles south of the beach town of Capaccio. The modest entrance across the lane from the museum yields to
a greensward covered with dandelions and clover, where dogs and visitors roam freely.

Sightseers get scant explanation, so it's best to buy a guidebook at one of the shops by the entrance to find
less obvious features such as the large house with a marble pool, or impluvium, for collecting rainwater and the Roman-era amphitheater.

The Greeks who founded Paestum succumbed to the inland Lucan people, who left marvelously frescoed tombs
in the area, and then to the Romans in the 3rd century BC. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Paestum was all
but abandoned to the malaria-infested marshes.

It wasn't until the 18th century, when Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered, that Grand Tour travelers stumbled upon the ruins of Paestum, as perfect and undisturbed as Sleeping Beauty.

The nearby museum has a rich cache of findings from the Paestum area, including a collection of Lucanian tomb slabs bearing brightly painted images that look almost like doodles. Most famous among them is a fresco of a
diver caught in midair, symbolizing the soul's plunge from this life to the next.

Take time to study the museum's series of metopes, or stone panels decorating the frieze above a row of Doric columns. They were found at the site of an important Greek temple, dedicated to Hera, at the mouth of the Sele River about 10 miles north of Paestum. With almost comic book vividness, the metopes depict mythological scenes, including Hercules' capture of the dwarfish Cercopes, tied by their feet to a pole hoisted on the hero's shoulders.

No standing ruins remain at the site of the Hera sanctuary, but the Museum of Hera Agriva Sanctuary has excellent multimedia exhibits on the cult of Hera and the work of Paola Montuoro and Umberto Bianco, Italian archaeologists who discovered the sanctuary in 1934.

The old stones of Foce Sele lie scattered near the river, surrounded by artichoke fields and pastures where water buffaloes graze -- a magical Italian landscape in which daily life goes on amid the ruins of an ancient civilization.




susan.spano
@latimes.com
Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
Pages: 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy