Agrigento

Temple of Concordia

Located on a plateau overlooking Sicily's southern coast, Agrigento was founded as Akragas around 582 BC (BCE) by a group of colonists from Gela, who themselves were the immediate descendants of Greeks from Rhodes and Crete.  The area was inhabited much earlier; a female skull found near Cannatello, a little SE of Agrigento, is half a million years old.  A Mesolithic village at Point Bianca, farther down the coast dates from 6000 BC.  The Sicanians may have descended from that civilization.  Akragas, named for the nearby river, flourished under Phalaris (570-554 BC), and developed further under Theron (488-471 BC), whose troops participated in the Battle of Himera in 480 BC, defeating the Carthaginians.  Agrigento was destroyed several times during the Punic Wars, suffering particularly extensive damage during a siege by Roman forces in 261 BC, but always rebuilt.  The Greek poet Pindar (518-438 BC) described Akragas as "the most beautiful city of the mortals."  Ancient Akragas became one of the leading cities in the Mediterranean world.  The remains its magnificent Doric temples that dominate the ancient town much of which still lies intact under today's fields demonstrate its supremacy. 

Temple of Juno

Almonds and olives grow around the temples 

Akragas covers a huge area, much of which is still unexcavated today.  The famous Valle dei Templi ("Valley of the Temples", a misnomer, as it is a ridge, rather than a valley) encompasses the south side of the ancient city where seven monumental Greek temples in the Doric style were constructed during the 6th and 5th centuries BC.  Now excavated and partially restored, they constitute some of the largest and best-preserved ancient Greek buildings outside of Greece itself.  In the Valley of the Temples are the ruins of numerous temples, also necropoli, houses, streets and everything else one would expect to find in an ancient city.  There is a small amphitheater, as well as several auditoria, and a fine archeological museum.  

A model of the Temple of Olympian Zeus

An atlas of the temple of Zeus

Unfortunately, most of the temples at Agrigento are in ruins, with pieces strewn about, and several appear to have never even been completed.  Despite its location, virtually in the shadow of a modern city, olive groves and almond orchards surround the Valley of the Temples and give it a natural ambience.  Its importance declined under the Byzantines and Saracens, who encouraged settlement of the medieval city (present-day Agrigento) several kilometers from the Valley of the Temples.  Akragas was renamed Agrigentum by the Romans, and Girgenti by the Arabs, only to be christened Agrigento in 1927, but the place is the same.

Temple of Heracles

Looking out to the sea from the valley of the temples