Here, in 280 BC, Pyrrhus defeated the Romans for the first time with his elephants and realised that winning like that did not pay: the Pyrrhic victory was born on this plain between the Agri and the Sinni. Heraclea was a young colony by the standards of Magna Graecia, founded around 434 by Taranto and Thurii after a war between them, on the rise where Siris had stood, and from 374 the capital of the Italiote League. Today its ruins lie behind Policoro, five kilometres from the sea, amid the citrus groves and greenhouses of the Metapontine plain.
What to see
The archaeological park occupies the hill of the acropolis, where the city reads best: the orthogonal streets of the Greek grid, the potters' quarter to the west with the houses and their kilns still attached, and lower down the foundations of the temple of Athena and the sanctuary of Demeter. The necropolises lie to the south and west. Over the Greek ruins grew the medieval Anglona, a bishop's seat, today itself in ruins. The excavations of the Italian-French mission found the traces of the siege of the acropolis when Spartacus passed through, and reopened the debate on where Siris really was.
The National Archaeological Museum of the Siritide, inside the park, keeps what the city has given back: the grave goods, the coins that are among the finest of Magna Graecia, and the great vases of the Policoro Painter, with Medea fleeing on the chariot of the Sun. The Tables of Heraclea, the bronze plates with the city's constitution in Greek and on the back the lex Iulia Municipalis in Latin, are in the Naples museum instead.
Visiting
Museum and park are at Policoro, on the SS 106 Jonica coast road, with a single ticket; you arrive by car or by train to Policoro-Tursi station and then a short ride. The museum is indoors and can be visited even at midday in summer; for the acropolis, where there is no shade, morning or late afternoon is better. From here to Metaponto is twenty minutes: the two colonies are visited together.
Our editors' tip
Start at the museum and look for the coin case: the head of Athena in her helmet and Heracles strangling the lion are the portrait of a city that wanted to be Greek through and through. Then climb the acropolis towards evening, when the raking light brings the lines of the streets out of the ground: for Hannibal in 212 and for Spartacus this hill was a fortress, and from up there you understand.