In southern Italy, a long-planned excavation is revealing the secrets of an ancient Greek sanctuary

"On 1 August, Massimo Osanna, the director general of museums at Italy's ministry of culture, announced that D'Angelo would take on additional duties as the deputy director of the Royal Palace of Naples, a thousand-room structure dating to the early 17th century that has suffered managerial and budgetary setbacks in recent years. Now overseeing two of southern Italy's leading cultural institutions, each with a staff of around 100, she has two very full plates to deal with."

""It's a lot of work, but I've always been a bit of a workaholic," says D'Angelo, a 42-year-old native of Milan. She plans to divide her week between Naples and her Paestum office. Dating back to the founding of the Greek colony of Poseidonia around 600BC, the Paestum site is known for its three well-preserved Doric temples. Unlike the excavated ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, further north along the coast towards Naples, the temple trio survived the past 2,500 years above ground, in plain view."

"This summer, the Italian archaeologist Tiziana D'Angelo had a lot on her plate. As the director of the Parchi archeologici di Paestum e Velia, the dual archaeological sites that lie south of Italy's Amalfi Coast, D'Angelo had begun overseeing the long-planned excavation of a recently discovered ancient Greek sanctuary. At the same time she was also devising the reinstallation of the Paestum site's elegant 20th-century museum building, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Paestum."

Tiziana D'Angelo oversees the Parchi archeologici di Paestum e Velia and has taken on a deputy directorship at the Royal Palace of Naples. She splits her time between Naples and Paestum while managing roughly 100 staff at each site. Paestum dates to around 600 BC and features three well-preserved Doric temples that remained visible above ground for 2,500 years. Archaeologists resumed excavation of a sanctuary discovered in 2019 after Covid interruptions and preparatory work from 2022–2024. The sanctuary lies near the old city walls on former private farmland within the park boundaries. D'Angelo is also planning the reinstallation of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Paestum.

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