Metaponto

Near the northwest coast of the Gulf of Taranto is Metaponto, with the remains of the famous Greek city of Metapontion, the Roman Metapontum. The town, probably founded by Archaean settlers at the beginning of the seventh century, became in the sixth century a center of Pythagorean teaching, the home of the great mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras, who is said to have died here in 497 B.C. at the age of 90. To the north of the town are the Tavole Palatine, the remains of a Doric temple, with 15 of the original 36 columns still standing.

The Antiquarium can display at any one time only a selection of the rich store of finds recovered in the excavations of recent years. Most of the material comes from the sacred precinct containing the remains of four large temples, which probably collapsed when they were undermined by rising ground-water in the third century B.C. A remarkable feature of the area is the carefully planned layout of the fertile plain, with regular field boundaries, roads and water channels and more than 300 Greek farmsteads, 11 of which have been excavated. The theater (third century B.C.), the walls of which were pulled down and the stones removed at an early period, had a semicircular cavea and Doric columns, anticipating some of the main features of the Roman theater.