The initial model was Thesauros I, the first building brought to light in the sacred area dedicated to Hera Argiva, identified and excavated near the mouth of the Sele between 1934 and '35.
It was 1952 and near the ancient city of Poseidonia/Paistom/Paestum that ancient construction was reproduced to make it the first, small museum reserved for the finds recovered between the adjacent temple area and the nearby Heraion. But the progress of the exploration of the sites and the constant increase in the collections also made a progressive expansion necessary, with the addition to that first nucleus of other exhibition spaces arranged around a garden and illuminated by large windows open towards the outside. From then until recent times, the structure and the exhibition layout have been the protagonists of other adjustments and transformations.
The prestigious museum of Paestum collects the extraordinary heritage of evidence from the Greek, Lucanian and Roman eras from the city and satellite sites such as the Heraion and the necropolises of the Paestum area. If the vast majority of the finds, starting with the most famous, come from tombs, the museum illustrates in the various sections all aspects of life, customs and religious beliefs of the populations and cultures that followed from the Greek foundation, which took place between end of the 7th century and the beginning of the 6th century BC, to the Lucanian presence in the 4th century BC, which was followed by the Roman conquest and the birth of the Latin colony from 272 BC. until its decline in the imperial age and abandonment in the 8th century AD.
The first section is dedicated to the history of the discovery of the site in the 8th century, although the archaeological investigation is almost entirely the result of the 20th century.
The narrative of the history of the site begins with the prehistoric settlements found in the area, which have yielded fundamental, predominantly ceramic finds, in particular from the Gaudo necropolis of which the museum also offers the reconstruction of tombs.
Of enormous interest and indisputable charm is the rich display of Greek red-figure and black-figure vases, witnesses of the very high artistic level achieved by local ceramists, including the famous Assteas, Pithon and the unknown "Aphrodite Painter". To the ceramic finds from the various historical phases of the city, there are vases and other bronze objects, weapons, armor and helmets and valuable jewels.
One section houses the painted and bas-relief decorations of the Heraion at the mouth of the Sele. Of particular importance are the seventy sandstone metopes coming from Thesauros I, of which the forty oldest date back to the 6th BC, while the other thirty are from the classical and late classical era. Some form a Trojan Cycle, others depict myths with their protagonists, eighteen represent the labors of Hercules. There is no shortage of votive offerings at the sanctuary, mostly statuettes of the goddess Hera and lion eaves decorations.
Also of great value is the exhibition of frescoed slabs from tombs from the Lucanian era (4th century BC). The oldest sepulchral slabs bore decorative motifs linked to vegetal elements or bands and crowns, all concentrated in the central part. Later, the decoration became more complex and refined: in the men's tombs, scenes were depicted with painted warriors with armour, helmets and weapons; for women only decorative elements were used, without the human figure.
The part of the exhibition reserved for Roman Paestum illustrates the evolution of the colony until the abandonment of the city through various sections and finds relating to urban planning, public monuments, sacred spaces and private spaces, necropolises and political-social structures.
The Tomb of the Diver
One of the main attractions of the Paestum Museum, famous worldwide for its particularity and uniqueness, is the so-called Tomb of the Diver. It is the only example of fresco wall painting from the Greek era that has come down to us from Magna Graecia and one of the very rare ones ever. It was brought to light on 3 June 1968 in the excavation of a small necropolis, a couple of kilometers south of Paestum. The author of the astonishing discovery was the archaeologist Mario Napoli, who in 1867 had begun to explore the sites of the necropolises around the city and in particular that of the Tempa del Prete area, used between the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century BC.
During the excavation operations, a tomb made up of slabs of the typical Paestan limestone appeared almost intact. Only the plate that served as a lid had a vertical fracture and another in one of the corners. But when lifting it, an interior frescoed on all sides appeared. And the upper slab also bore a painting, the most particular of all, which would have decreed its subsequent fame and would have inspired the name by which that tomb would have been recognized forever.
Without a bottom, resting directly on the limestone ground, the tomb contained the remains of a young man and a set of objects reduced in number, but of notable quality: an Attic lekythos with black figures and parts of two alabaster aryballoi, as well as fragments of turtle carapace, connected to a lyre. Probably the deceased young man, belonging to a prominent family in the city, had cultivated a passion for music. Thanks to the vases, it was possible to date the burial between 480 and 470 BC, a period identified as the "severe era".
The four lateral slabs of the tomb represent scenes of a symposium in which music is evoked by musical instruments and in the reaction of some of the ten symposiasts, placed in pairs or individually on the klinai, the classic banquet beds, near low tables embellished and bearing of the kilikes, the serving cups. Other cups appear in the hands of some participants, while one of them uses his cup for the game of kottabos, widely practiced on convivial occasions by the Greeks and Etruscans. The symposiasts drink, play the diàulos (flute) and the lyre, dialogue and exchange effusions. On the shorter side plates, on one side, a naked ephebe is represented drawing wine from a large vase placed on a table adorned with festoons, and on the other, a girl playing an àulos (a flute) is followed by a young man dancing and by an elderly bearded man, identifiable as a paidagogos, a master.
In the most famous slab, the upper one, the scene changes completely: the protagonist is a young man, in the act of diving towards a surface that evokes the sea. The scene is also composed of two trees and a structure which contributed significantly to the debate on the meaning and communicative intent of the work. The prevailing version among scholars is the one that identifies the diver as the deceased who leaves life to pass into the afterlife. And the structure behind him could evoke the Pillars of Hercules, reinforcing the message of the dive into the unknown. According to a recent reinterpretation, however, the painting does not hide any otherworldly implications or philosophical or ritual meanings, but represents the dive of a young man who performs a test of courage, perhaps linked to the transition to adulthood.
Based on the differences found in the brushstrokes, the work could be traced back to two authors, one more master of the technique and another more immature. To create the painting, they would have used a tempera technique, starting from a drawing with sinopia, or red ochre, on the layer of thin stucco, and then scratching and fixing the preparatory drawing on the support. The fairly widespread symposium subject is inspired by the models of contemporary vase painting. While the painting of the diver is decidedly rare in the Greek context, as is the choice of pictorial decoration of sepulchral slabs destined not to have an audience. A work that is not extraordinary from an artistic point of view, but which represents a unique work that justifies its immense historical and cultural value.
