Tristan Hughes

One of the best Doric temples in the world, magnificent and awe-inspiring.

Stepping inside, you are dwarfed by the large Doric columns that fill its interior.

And it's not just single-tiered, if you look up, you notice that there is another level of columns in the centre.

The remains of limestone stairs confirm the fact, this temple originally had multiple floors.

It was here, within the grand ruins of the Temple of Neptune, that I met Dr Tiziana D'Angelo, director of the Archaeological Park of Pestum and Tivellia.

Tiziana, this does just blow me away.

I'm so excited.

And this was right at the heart.

Was this the sacred centre of the temple?

So this is just the big house for the god.

But do we know which god was worshipped here?

The queen of the gods, so Hera, she's the wife of Zeus, so she is one of the top gods of the Maltese.

Being such a massive construction, not just one storey, two storeys high, do we know much about how they built this?

So it's that one right there behind us.

So interestingly, that one is almost, they're experimenting with Doric architecture and this is almost a finalized version of it when they've almost got the style nailed out more to a tee.

You mentioned that at the end of the 6th century BC, so that's within roughly a hundred years of Pestum being founded, it seems pretty quick.

Was this almost a statement of power, of the wealth of Pestum at that time?

That within a hundred years of it being founded they could already build massive temples like this?

So it's almost like the colony overtakes the mother city, almost kind of the apprentice becomes the master in a weird kind of way.

Yeah.