IF YOU GO TO AGRIGENTO, DON’T GO TO AGRIGENTO

…avoid the modern city and go instead to the Valle dei Templi (Valley of the Temples).  From The Blue Guide Sicily:

Agrigento, once one of the most prosperous of the ancient Greek cities on the island, preserves a remarkable series of Doric temples of the 5^th century BC, unequaled except in Greece itself.  The medieval and modern city, on the site of the ancient acropolis, crowns a narrow ridge overlooking a valley which stretches towards the sea, in the midst of which, on a second lower ridge, stand the superb Classical ruins.

They really are superb!  But before you go, a quick refresher on ancient Greek history and mythology might be helpful.  

Legend says the city of Akragas (the ancient Greek name for Agrigento, aka Girgenti) was founded by Daedalus, whose myth goes like this.  Daedalus was an inventor who worked for King Minos of Crete.  Minos’s wife was passionate about a beautiful bull and she had to have it.  So Daedalus built her a hollow, wooden simulacrum, which she entered, only to be ravaged by the bull, resulting in the birth of the Minotaur, a creature half-man, half-bull.   

 Which is probably all bull.  Akragas was more likely colonized around 580 BC by Greeks from Rhodes and Crete.  From 570 to 555 BC the city of about 200,000 suffered under the tyrant Phalaris, who is thought to have introduced the Cretan bull cult to the city.  Phalaris was a charming individual who had a hollow bronze bull built, in which he would imprison his enemies, light a fire under them, and listen to their screams reverberate against the metal, which reminded him of a bellowing bull.  (Today’s tyrants are such weenies by comparison!)   The cult of the bull is linked to the Phoenician cult of Baal on Rhodes, which practiced human sacrifice, usually of children, to the Minotaur.  The bull of Phalaris is thought to have also been used in ritual human sacrifice.  (And you thought the child detention camps at the border were bad!)

Moving right along in a less bloody vein.  Akragas was famous for its particular breed of horses and its chariot racers, who were frequent victors at the Olympic games.  It was the birthplace of the poet and philosopher Empedocles (492-432 BC), who invented the theory of the four elements of matter—air, fire, water, and earth.  It was also the birthplace of the physician Acron, who invented fumigation and wiped out the plague in Athens in 430 BC.  Akragas was defeated by Syracuse and became a republic, which was burned to the ground in 406 BC by the Carthaginians led by Hannibal on his elephant.  The construction of a few temples in the Valley, including the largest—the Temple of Olympian Zeus—came to a screeching halt on that date.  

The Carthaginians started a karmic cycle of comeuppance when they were defeated by the Romans in 261 AD, who were defeated by the Arabs in 827 AD, who were defeated by the Normans under Count Roger in 1087 AD.  Agrigento’s final defeat was the collapse of its sulphur industry around 1900 and (in my opinion) the lack of zoning and building ordinances, or at least the lack of their enforcement.  But like the rest of Sicily, Agrigento is reinventing itself as a tourism destination and heavily promotes its local produce, wine, and oil.

But, as I said, you don’t want to go to Agrigento, anyway.  You want to head directly to the Valle dei Templi.  You need at least a day, and two would be better, as the site is quite large—4.5 km by 3 km.  Ideally, you want to see the site at dawn, dusk, and floodlit at night, and the next day you would be free to spend at the on-site archaeological museum.  We had just about four hours for our visit in the afternoon, but it was enough to take in the major attractions and well worth the 2.5 hour drive from Palermo.

The Temple of Concord, Giacinto-Gigante (1806-1876)

 Although the site is sprawling, if you’re tight on time, there are actually only four don’t-miss temples:  the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Temple of Concord, the Temple of Hera, and the Temple of Castor and Pollux.  Here are some photos and a summary of each.  NOTE for the math nerds:  when you say, for example, that a temple has six columns on the short ends and 13 on the long sides, you might think that yields 38 columns total (6+13 x 2 = 38), but that would be wrong, as you would have double counted the columns at the corners.  The correct count in this case would be 34.

Temple of Olympian Zeus (480-406 BC)

Thought to have been built by Carthaginian prisoners, construction of the Temple of Olympian Zeus stopped in a just-desserts kind of way with the Carthaginian invasion in 406.  The temple is just a jumble of huge stones today.  What’s interesting from an architectural standpoint is the fact that the temple is heptastyle (seven columns on the short ends and 14 on the long sides) and pseudoperipteral, meaning the 38 columns were engaged with the walls, as opposed to being free-standing, which is what you normally see in a Doric temple.  Thus, these engaged columns and their capitals were flat on one side and rounded on the other (see photo below).   

Also fascinating are the 38 telemone (see photo below), male caryatids that stood 7.6 meters high between the engaged columns.  

After the Carthaginians had their way with it, the temple was further destroyed by various earthquakes and quarrying in the 18^th c.  Typical story.

Temple of Concord (430 BC)

The Temple of Concord is the best preserved of all extant Greek temples other than the Temple of Hephaistos in Athens.  The name derives from a Latin inscription (Tempio della Concordia) on the temple, and the tradition is that newlyweds should pay a visit to ensure a marriage free of strife.  (It might be too late for us.)  The temple has six columns on the short ends and 13 on the long sides, so 34 in all.  

Its cella (the inner sanctum, usually at the center of the temple, where the most sacred rites were practiced) is intact.  I had never seen an intact cella before, so this was pretty exciting!  

In the 6^th c. AD the cella walls were opened up with arches (see photo above), when S. Gregorio delle Rape (Saint Gregory of the Turnips—I kid you not!) converted it into a church:  A sacred site is a sacred site is a sacred site.  This is the religious equivalent of location, location, location.  

Temple of Hera (ca. 450 BC)

The Temple of Hera stands at the opposite end of the site from the Temple of Olympian Zeus, thus making the king and queen of Mount Olympus the site’s anchors.  This temple is similar in form to the Temple of Concord, with 6 columns on the short ends and 13 on the long sides.  Like its mate, the temple was burned by the Carthaginians in 406 BC and you can see traces of fire damage in the dark red color of some of the interior stones.  More recently, the temple has been threatened by landslides and efforts at stabilization are underway. 

As with the Temple of Olympian Zeus, there is an altar just opposite the west entrance that was used for sacrifices.  I had a kind of epiphany over the altars.  In a Catholic church, an image or a sculpture of Christ on the cross normally hangs above the altar, a reminder of the greatest human sacrifice of all.  The altar itself is the most sacred part of the church and houses the sacraments of Holy Communion:  the blood (wine) and the body (the Communion wafer) of Christ.  Interesting how Christianity co-opted these pagan rituals for its own ecclesiastical purposes. 

Sanctuary of the Chthonic Divinities (Gods of the Earth)

(Five bucks if you can pronounce chthonic!)  This area of the site is much older, dating from the 7^th c. BC.  It was dedicated to the gods of the Earth:  Dionysus, Demeter, and Persephone.  Here stands my favorite ruin at Agrigento—just four columns and the architrave—of a temple incorrectly assigned to Castor and Pollux.  It was restored in 1836 and is often used in brochures touting the beauties of Classical Sicily.  Good choice.

And here’s an interesting side note.  This temple and the others at Agrigento are made of soft sandstone, which is subject to extreme erosion.  To preserve its longevity, the stone was covered in stucco made of marble dust (Serpotta's technique!  See blog post 20.04.2019.) and then painted in polychrome.  Most of this polychrome has disappeared now, but what we are left with, a rich tawny gold, is spectacular (see photo above).

Emblematic of a more modern Agrigento is the writer Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), who was born in Kaos (How perfect is that?!) not far from the Valle dei Templi to a sulphur-mining father.  (Sidebar:  Until 1900, Sicily was the world’s primary commercial source of sulphur, a primary ingredient of gunpowder.  In fact, sulphur was what drew the French and Spanish to the island.)  According to the Blue Guide, there is a “delightful small museum” in Kaos displaying Pirandello’sbooks, manuscripts, paintings, and photographs, and the Taviani brothers (Cinema Paradiso) made a film called Kaos in 1984 based on his short stories. 

“Under a wind-blown pine, the ashes of the dramatist and novelist were finally buried according to his wishes, beneath a ‘rough rock in the countryside of Girgenti.’”   

I’ve put Kaos on the list, along with the archaeological museum!

Keep it real!

Marilyn