Marina di Ragusa
Our winter home

AGRIGENTO – VALLE DEI TEMPLI

The valley of the temples. You may recall, back in November, as we sailed down the west coast of Sicily heading for our winter berth, we saw these amazing ruins perched high on the hill and promised we would return and explore them when we had a car.
Our friends, Andy and Karen were visiting Sicily for a weeks break. They had rented an apartment close to the marina and we had planned to do sightseeing with them. They last visited us in August 2017 when we were on the River Villaine in France. We picked them up from Catania airport and once checked in and sorted, they came on board Stiletto for supper.
Agrigento is known for its ruins of the ancient city of Akragas. It is a huge site (900 acres) with incredibly well preserved Greek temples. It has a very colourful history, but briefly, it was established around 582 – 580 BC and is attributed to Greek colonists from Gela. It grew rapidly and became one of the richest and most famous of the Greek colonies. It was eventually captured by the Romans in 210 BC who renamed it Agrigentum although it remained a largely Greek speaking community for centuries.
Karen spent some time “stone hugging” and we were both in awe of the fact that these huge blocks of stone had not only been carved by hand but had also been constructed one on top of the other to create these magnificent temples. It was truly a feat of engineering. We chatted about who it may have been who had such talent to carve perfect circles in the stone : probably slaves. It just blew us all away.

Song for this post: Temple of the King by Rainbow

Thought for this post: If only we could go back in time – just for a short while!!!

Highlight for this post: I have visited the Acropolis in Athens which was amazing, but this site was so vast, so well preserved given its great age, that it was difficult to comprehend that it had been constructed without the use of power tools a couple of thousand years ago.