Agrigento

We arrived in Agrigento well after dark and were thus able to take in the full effect of the Valley of the Temples. The four main temples are brightly lit in a truly stunning display as you drive by on the highway near town. I’m not sure why it is referred to as a “valley” since all of the temples are actually located on a ridge that dominates the surrounding area (which is probably a valley of some sort!). Apparently, if you want to see the best preserved remnants of the ancient Greek world, your first choice might just be to bypass the instability of Greece and head to Sicily instead. These temples are one suggestion of why. The archeological site is another of the many UNESCO World Heritage sites which blanket Sicily.

It is hard to say that the temples are all original. Sicily is very geologically active and earthquakes, both major and minor, are common. As a result of all that rock’n and roll’n, most stuff eventually falls down. Across the years, the puzzle pieces are sometimes put back together and such restorations aren’t always recorded. Modern restorers take a different tack, making it very clear what was original and what has been redone.

All of which brings us to the temples themselves. On a craggy outcropping at the eastern end of the ridge stands the Temple of Hera Lacinia. All the attributions in this post are the conventional ones. There aren’t records and weren’t icons in the appropriate places to ever know for sure who any of the temples were dedicated to. It is a good sized temple, facing east as they all do, consisting of 6 x 13 columns.

As you walk west along the ridge you encounter a series of niche tombs, carved out of the rock, with a large olive tree nearby. Based on the size, the tree is estimated to be in excess of 500 years old. The tombs are much older.

Continuing west you come to the best preserved of the four temples which we saw, the Temple of Concordia. Concordia refers to the fact that is not attributed to any particular god, but rather to many. Built around 430 BC, it is nearly perfect in geometric proportions, being again 6 x 13 columns, each of which is exactly the same size and height. The ancient Greeks were big on physical perfection because they felt that it mirrored inner perfection and brought them closer to their gods. Its remarkable state of preservation is due to the fact that it was converted to a Christian basilica in 597 AD and thus maintained to some degree for many centuries beyond its contempories.

Next in line was the Temple of Herakles. As a temple dedicated to the mythical strongman of the ancient world who is also the national hero of Sicily and Agrigento, it was undoubtedly an imposing space. However, it is now reduced mostly to ruins. Of the original 38 columns (6 x 15) only 9 are standing today and even those were re-erected less than 100 years ago.

Finally we have the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Built to give thanks to Zeus for a victory over Carthage in 479 BC, it was HUGE. The building was over 110 meters long and 56 meters wide – in other words, larger than a football field, including end zones. It had 7 x 14 Doric-style columns, but that is a deceptive count since the space between columns was filled by a wall with 7 and 1/2 meter tall statues, called telamons, between them. Most of the building came down in 1401. A few of the telamons have been pieced back together lying on the ground and one is pictured below.

To give you a sense of scale, our friend Keith is pictured standing next to one of the column tops.

There are another 3-4 temples which are part of this group, but they are much harder to access and we did not venture to see them.