On the lid of a stone tomb, a naked man dives from a platform towards the water. He is painted with a few lines, in a suspended moment, and he has no parallels: of all Greek painting of the classical age almost nothing survives, and this slab, found in 1968 in a necropolis outside Paestum, is one of the very few documents we have.
What to see
The tomb is made of five slabs painted in fresco. On the four walls there is a banquet: men reclining on couches, drinking, playing the lyre, looking at each other and talking, with boys serving the wine. On the lid is the diver, alone, and the leap has always been read as an image of the passage from life to death, though nobody can say so for certain.
The paintings are of the fifth century before Christ, from the time when Paestum was the Greek city of Poseidonia. What strikes you is the simplicity: few colours, essential drawing, no superfluous decoration. In a room of the museum the slabs are assembled to form the tomb as it was, and you can walk around it.
Visiting
The tomb is in the archaeological museum of Paestum, inside the archaeological area; the ticket is combined with the temples. An hour for the museum, half a day with the whole site.
Our editors' tip
Look first at the banquet walls and only at the end at the lid: the symposium scenes are full of gestures, conversation and glances, while the diver is alone, in the middle of empty space, with nobody. It is that contrast which makes this tomb something you remember for years.