The entire region of Campania has mythical folklore woven through its historic DNA. From the beach in Positano you can see the islands of Li Galli off in the distance where it is said the mythical Sirens aka; mermaids, lured unsuspecting sailors to their deaths with sad, yet beautiful melodies. These kinds of stories are shared by drivers and locals throughout the region, but to me, there is no place more mythical than Paestum!
Paestum was founded by Greek refuges in 600 BC and is home to some of the most amazing ruins. The ruins center around three large temples built to honor Hera, Athena and Poseidon. For those with limited exposure to Greek mythology, Hera is both the wife and sister of Zeus and considered to be the “queen of heaven” and the “goddess of marriage”, with a really bad jealous streak. Go figure! Athena was considered the “warrior goddess of heroic endeavor” and was said to have been born from Zeus’ head. Meaning, he “crafted her in his mind”, he made his imagination come to life. No wonder Hera was jealous, and she was jealous of Athena. Poseidon was the god of the sea, waters, earthquakes and horses. It’s said that his father ate him at birth but Zeus later saved him. Yesh, these stories are as bad as day-time television! In any event, these early Greek settlers clearly wanted to cover their bases with the gods by building these three temples…they were saying, we need protection to build our families in a foreign land, and they were right. Over the centuries they fought and where conquered multiple times. And unlike Pompeii and Herculaneum, Paestum was not destroyed by a volcano, it was abandoned. All that…to simply be abandoned! I suppose for us, today, it’s a good thing it was abandoned because the ruins are amazingly intact!
Just a short drive from the ruins you can visit a buffalo farm to see how buffalo mozzarella is made. I’ve bought buffalo mozzarella for years but I never really thought about the name. I never thought it defined the milk that made the cheese…buffalo milk! Who knew? This makes for a lovely day trip from Positano that will make you feel like you’ve actually left Italy and drove into Greece!
