Paestum Museum

The Museum at Paestum is of interest, if for no other reason than for a collection actually on-site. It was surprisingly large, with a floor devoted to the Greek/Lucanian age, one to the Roman age, and one to the paleolithic and neolithic finds at the site.

Paestum Museum

Back-stabbing; among the metopes from the temples

A very helpful map of the Greek diaspora, c. 1000-500BCE;

where we have been recently

Greek era pottery

From Paestrum's necropolis: sarcophogus interiors were
decorated with frescoes, unlike pretty much any other place;
here is the most famous of them, The Diver

Over-view of The Diver (diving into the next life, as it were)

Another of the more colorful tomb frescoes

And expressive

Elsewhere, a terracotta still-life

Not sure what to make of this metope

Neolithic pottery from the site



And from the Roman, a togato (toga! toga!)

Paestum, 2011

Paestum is one of Italy's greatest archaeological sites, but not for anything Roman nor Italian. In the 6th century BC the Greeks established a colony here, Poseidonia, one of scores they established after the end of the Bronze Age, all over the Mediterannean and Black Seas. What is notable at Paestum are three 6th and 5th century Doric temples, largely intact, older and better preserved than anything you will see in Greece.

Temple of Apollo, 5th century BCE

Remains of theatre, much buried beneath a 19th century road

The Ekklesiasterion--a meeting place for citizens--established

by the Lucanians, indigenous folk who took over from the

Greeks

Temple of Athena, on an artificial mound, to be above the

others 

Baths



More of the civic area, looking north to the mountains

Main street

Us at the Temple of Apollo

Temple of Apollo

Temple of Hera...really old...550BC

A forest of ancient Doric columns

Sassi

Having gotten our bearings, sort of, we drove out of Bari (Patra's sister city, I think) and on into the interior, stopping at Matera for a) purchase of an Italian USB modem (yes!), and b) a stop at the Pantaleone Azienda Agritouristico campground. The former entailed biding our time parked on the main drag of Matera until 4:30PM when the Wind store reopened after its 4-hour lunch break. The latter is (we hope) a typical Italian farm expanded to include a restaurant, hostel, and campground. The campground was actually fairly nice and reasonable, although the English spoken was pretty minimal. The restaurant had no menu--"cuisine traditionale." We were joined later by a pair of French RVs and then another from Spain. We spent the evening recovering from our voyage, but the next day we ventured back into Matera.

Modern-day Matera sits along a great limestone gorge in which people have been living, in caves, for some aeons. In 1952, the Italian government declared them unsafe and moved everyone to Matera, atop the gorge. The cave dwellings--Sassi--are now a World Heritage Site, many restored and an attraction of some note. Mel Gibson's Passion of Christ was filmed here, but we went to see Sassi anyway.

En route from Bari to Matera, we saw a number of these

interesting stone corballed structures out in the groves

The gorge and some of the dwellings

Across the gorge, mostly cattle nowadays



River at the bottom of the gorge



Interior of Casa Grotto, one of the restored family dwellings;

three rooms, actually; it looked pretty spacious to us; in

reality, Sassi was noted for its poverty and 50% infant

mortality rate; the plight of its residents was made known by

physician/writer Carlos Levi

The kitchen

Living area; common bowl from which food is served

One-car garage

More of the cave town

In there somewhere is St. Peter's church/cave

The campground Pantaleone Azienda Agritouristico; very
nice



Sassi/Matera is worth a stop on the way. If you have seen Cappadocia, however, you won't be impressed.

Farewell, Greece; Cruising the Adriatic

We had seen the sights we wanted to see in Greece and were anxious to move on to Italy. (In retrospect, we might have stayed warmer and drier by spending another week in the south of the Peloponnese.) So we drove up the west side--not the pretty side, I'd say--of the peninsula to Patra, where we planned to take the ferry to Bari, Italy. Patra looked like a scary town, not a place you'd want to linger. Even in the security-controlled port area, young jerks were trying to get at our vehicle. So it was with some relief that we boarded the ferry, the Superfast II--part of the Superfast fleet--after only half an hour in the port, and got ourselves and the Grey Wanderer ready for the not-so-superfast 15 and a half hour voyage. We embarked at 6PM and debarked in Bari at 8:30AM Italian time. The vessel was quite large and full of amenities, for sale, and the voyage was very smooth. A week later or even a few days later and it might not have been so smooth. Vicki brought her eye-shades and ear-plugs and was able to sleep much of the night. I couldn't find mine and suffered accordingly. (I did catch a bit of an apparently 50s movie bio of Verdi). But we made it just fine and just in time to see the last of sunny Italy for a few days. By nightfall temperatures had dropped into the 30s and rain was threatening. It's still February, and we are a couple hundred miles north of where we were in Greece.

The fortress above Patra; we wanted to get out of Patra

Typical port scene

Our ship, the Good Ferry Superfast II; note stylish tail-fins

The Grey Wanderer safely and securely parked; it was its

2nd longest voyage ever (counting the Atlantic, of course)

Leaving Patra

Farewell, Greece

The Snoring Lounge aboard the Superfast II

Arriving in Bari; we spent our first few hours in the port

parking lot, looking at maps and guides, planning our tour

of southern Italy

Olympia Museum

Olympia Museum; the Games are very old, older than

Clasical Greece, and it is amazing how much has survived

West pediment of Temple of Zeus: the battle between the

Lapiths and Centaurs (look it up)

East pediment: Pelops, founder of the Games, father of

Peloponnesians

Detail: a Lapith woman

Detail from the east pediment: the Seer

Nike of Paeonios: formerly on the triangular

pedestal in the sanctuary

And now, two of the utterly cool things in this museum

(reflecting my bias for the historical, I suppose): this is

Miltiades' helmet, from the Battle of Marathon; he had

presented it to the Games as an offering to Zeus

And this cup, found in the excavation of Pheidias'

workshop, bears the inscription "I belong to Pheidias"

A warrior bids farewell to wife and child

Among the hundreds of figurines found at Olympia