Derek, Sam and I met at 9:30AM to take our little Fiat to Agrigento for the day.
Sam is fascinated by Greece like I am with Sicily, so I told him he could not miss the Valley of the Temples. Anticipating a few translation opportunities/emergencies, I happily went along.
The drive down the impossibly narrow streets of Taormina and through the vast middle of Sicily was beautiful and fun. The interior is really so rural that it’s hard to believe living there, at least for me. The isolation would certainly force one to live off the land but would, it seems, really limit exposure to all that the region has to offer.
We arrived at the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento without a problem. You end up winding through more narrow streets catching glimpes over ever-larger temples on the horizon. The temples seems to appear out of nowhere and quickly become the dominating landscape on a ridge that drops off to the Mediterranean. Exciting.
The first temple we visited was the Temple of Hera (c. 450 BCE). This temple has survived landslides, earthquakes, and fires in its 2460 years in existence.
Temple of Hera
We then moved on to the Temple of Concordia (c. 430 BCE), which is the best preserved Greek temple in the world outside of Greece (the Temple of Hephaistos, Athens, is considered the best) and is unique in its rich color and symmetry. We purchased an extra ticket, which turned out to be entirely unnecessary, to enter the temple for a modern art exhibition offered in the interior of the temple. Being able to walk through the massive temple – to fully appreciate the grandeur and scale of the ancient site and see it with a new, improved perspective- was well worth the extra 2 Euro.
Temple of Concordia
Temple of Concordia - Interior
Temple of Concordia - Modern Art
Temple of Concorida - Cella
The Temple of Heracles lies just beyond the Concordia and represents the oldest of the temples in the Valley, having been built in about 500 BCE. I love seeing something new in something I have visited before and noticed a displaced capital on the ground, which helped to reinforce the size temple.
Temple of Heracles
Finally, we made it to the Temple of Olympian Zeus (c. 480 BCE), which was the largest Doric temple known on earth and is my favorite temple in the Valley. The temple is in ruins partly because of earthquakes, but ultimately because of quarrying its pieces for the construction of the Port of Empedocles. This temple was massive: 110.1m by 52.7m, which is a bit larger than a football field, and the telamons that stood between the base and capitals measure approximately 16.7m in height – that’s the equivalent of 5 1/2 stories tall. This would have been an absolutely breathtaking feat of Sicilian construction had it not been carried off to build a port. It does appear that archaeologists are reexamining the site, as some of the stones have been identified there is a newly discovered and reconstructed telamon on site.
Temple of Olympian Zeus - Telamon Excavation
Temple of Olympian Zeus - Telamon
Temple of Olympian Zeus - Capital
Revisiting the Valley of the Temples was incredibly satisfying. I was thrilled to be able to enter the Temple of Concordia, and to find continued work on the Temple of Zeus. The work being done is encouraging and the inclusion of art exhibitions on the historic site is an interesting marriage between Sicily’s present and its past.
Miranda
