Temple of Hera I (Basilica)
The oldest of Paestum's three great temples stops you with a small puzzle: that central row of columns running down the middle of the naos, splitting the inner room in two. No other Greek temple in Italy does this. Built around 550–525 BCE by colonists from the city of Sybaris, the structure predates the Roman empire by centuries, yet all fifty columns of its peristyle still stand, their sandstone warm and slightly amber in afternoon light.
Eighteenth-century road workers stumbled across the site in 1752, and early archaeologists, thrown by that unusual interior colonnade, called it a basilica — a Roman civic hall. The name stuck long after the mistake was corrected. Votive terracottas inscribed ΗΡ and ΗΡΑ, dug from pits around the foundations, eventually confirmed what the temple was: a place of Hera, where betrothed women and their families left offerings.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who return tend to come back in the late afternoon, when the low sun catches the column drums and the shadows lengthen across the stylobate. The SP276 pedestrian road along the park's eastern edge gives a long, unobstructed view of all three temples in a line — worth walking before you go inside. First Sunday of the month, entry is free.
The story behind Temple of Hera I (Basilica)
Poseidonia — the Greek name for what is now Paestum — was founded by settlers from Sybaris on the Tyrrhenian coast of southern Italy. Within a century of the city's establishment, they had raised this temple on a three-step stylobate of local sandstone, making it one of the oldest surviving Greek temples on Italian soil. Its 9×18 column arrangement and the unusual interior colonnade reflect an archaic Doric tradition still working out its own rules.
The city passed from Greek to Lucanian hands near the end of the 5th century BCE, then to Rome in 273 BCE, when it was renamed Paestum. As the Roman town declined in late antiquity, the temple was abandoned and eventually swallowed by the landscape. It remained largely invisible until 1752, when a road crew broke ground and found columns still standing.
Good to know
A Trenitalia train from Salerno takes about 35 minutes to Paestum station; the park entrance is 1km away through Porta Sirena. A single ticket (€12 March–November, €6 December–February) covers three days and also includes the site at Velia. Spring and early autumn are the most comfortable seasons to visit.
April through June brings warm days and wildflowers across the site, with manageable crowds and temperatures in the low-to-mid twenties Celsius. July and August are dry and very sunny — over ten hours of light daily — but heat on exposed stone can be intense by midday. November is the wettest month; winter visits are quieter and cheaper, though the site closes earlier.
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What travellers say about Temple of Hera I (Basilica)
The older of the two temples o the southern side of the park, was built in the Archiac period. Was probably dedicated to Hera. It is the best preserved temple from this period. In fact because it is built with odd number of pillars nobody is really sure it was in fact a temple.
In the Wikipedia sais . Hera was an Olympian goddess in the Greek pantheon, known as the queen of the gods. She was the goddess of marriage, family, childbirth, and women. Hera was the wife, and sister, of Zeus, and many of her most famous myths center around her jealous retributions to Zeus's infidelity. Here in parco archeologico di paestrum, the temple of Hera is Amazing and gives a lot of inspiration and good energy Even Hera was terrible she also have a great and helpful side for people Is interesting that is a lot of ants … that looks like eating the rocks If you are around is really so good and nice place to visit
Beautiful ruins of the temple dedicated to our lady Hera.
The Basilica of Paestum is the only Greek temple from the Archaic period in which the peristasis, here composed of 50 columns, is preserved in its entirety.
The oldest temple in Pestum. It's incredible to think how, with the resources of the time, they were able to build a marvel of such dimensions. The signatures on the columns are unique and special for the Greek world.
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