The forum of Roman Paestum occupies the ground once held by the Greek agora, a shift in purpose that mirrors the town’s own transformation. It is a broad rectangle, about 57 by 150 metres, laid out north of the older Hera sanctuary. A peristyle of re-used Doric columns encloses the space, their earlier life still legible in the stone. On the south side, tabernae, shops or workshops, lined the square, hinting at daily commerce. To the southwest, a set of baths, a gift from one M. Tullius Venneianus, offered the standard Roman sequence of warm, hot and cold rooms. On the western flank stands a curious triple-podium structure, likely a lararium, where household gods might have been honoured on a civic scale. The forum is less a single monument than a palimpsest: Greek bones, Roman flesh, and the quiet, stubborn evidence of a town that kept rebuilding.
Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.
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