Italy Guide
Sicily
Agrigento
Though handsome, well-sited and awash with medieval atmosphere, AGRIGENTO is rarely visited for the town itself. The interest instead focuses on the substantial remains of Pindar's "most beautiful city of mortals", a couple of kilometres below. Here, strung out along a ridge facing the sea, is a series of Doric temples – the most captivating of Sicilian Greek remains and a grouping unique outside Greece.
In 581 BC colonists from nearby Gela and from Rhodes founded the city of Akragas between the rivers of Hypsas and Akragas. They surrounded it with a mighty wall, formed in part by a higher ridge on which stood the acropolis (and, today, the modern town). The southern limit of the ancient city was a second, lower ridge and it was here, in the "Valle dei Templi", that the city architects erected their sacred buildings during the fifth century BC.
Read more ▼
- Practical Information ▼
- Sight(s) ▼