The 2018 excavations undertaken by the Fondazione Paestum ONLUS aimed to gather further data on the development of the plan and organisation of the area of the southern Porticus during its phases of use and those preceding its construction.
The Porticus was uncovered in the 1950s by P.C. Sestrieri, who removed the abandonment levels and dumped material obliterating it. Systematic excavations took place in the 1980s, 1996 and 2008.

This porticoed structure extended for over 100 m on an E/W alignment and was situated north of the forum, to the south of the residential sector situated south of the so-called hypogean Sacellum, and east of the N/S road An.1.
The investigations in 1996 dated the construction of the Porticus to the mid 1st century B.C., but left numerous questions unanswered particularly with regard to the earlier phases (from the 5th to 2nd centuries B.C.).

During the most recent excavations, a taberna was investigated whose internal layout was clarified. It was divided into two rooms, the front room, probably used for sales and a backroom, separated by a wooden partition wall of which the stone foundation was preserved. The few pottery fragments found in the make-up for the beaten floor surface and the larger number found inside a dolia preserved in situ in the north-eastern corner of the taberna, suggest that the structure was in use during the 2nd century A.D.

The stratigraphy that emerged immediately outside the taberna and along the Porticus has been dated to about the 3rd century A.D., a phase just before the structure went out of use. Only the analysis of all the materials will provide more precise dating. The continuation of the excavations aims to investigate the earliest phase of the Porticus.