VALLEY OF TEMPLES TOUR
The "Valle dei Templi" is in Agrigento (knewn as Akragas), one of the largest Greek cities on the Mediterranean Sea. Eventually enclosed with a defensive wall (featuring 9 entrances) was inserted onto the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997
The Valley is an enchanted place with embraces sacred and ancient landmarks, and which through the millennia has sheltered, civilization after civilization, with a succession of cultures and traditions. The remains from the Hellenic city, and additionally from the successive Punic-Roman era, the imposing Doric temples - to this day almost completely intact - the agora, the pagan and Christian necropolises, and the crawling network of subterranean acqueducts, constitute the richness of this site..
LET'S START
...our tour in the Temples Valley, beginning from the doric temple of Giunone or Hera Lacinia, built contemporarily to the Concordia between the 4TH and the 5TH century b.C, using the local calcarenite in the oriental part of the Valley. It has 13 columns every side and inside it was divided in 3 rooms but nowadays there are many rests because of the fire due to the Cartaginesi.Numerous cavities with curved upper surfaces cut into the rock face may be seen; these are tombs know as arcosoli and do not belong to the original defensive structure, but were constructed between the 4th and the 7th centuries.Continuing the walking, there is the Temple of Concordia, probably the most impressive Greek Doric temple still extant in our day, after Athens's Parthenon. The structure was adapted as a Christian church, evidence of which can be seen in the tombs excavated in the ground. The oldest temple in Agrigento is, rather, that of Heracles or Hercules.The Temple to Zeus - or Jove the Olympian - and the only remaining ruins of which are its base and principal altar, was one of the biggest Greek temples in Antiquity. Also worth seeing nearby are the Temple of Castor and Pollux (the Dioscuri); the Sanctuary dedicated to the goddesses of grain and vegetation (aka the Chtonic divinities) - Demeter and Persephone - who were worshipped with much devotion by the women in these parts; the Temple of Hephaestus or Vulcan, which faces the former temple across a pool that is fed by an aqueduct.
...our tour in the Temples Valley, beginning from the doric temple of Giunone or Hera Lacinia, built contemporarily to the Concordia between the 4TH and the 5TH century b.C, using the local calcarenite in the oriental part of the Valley. It has 13 columns every side and inside it was divided in 3 rooms but nowadays there are many rests because of the fire due to the Cartaginesi.
Numerous cavities with curved upper surfaces cut into the rock face may be seen; these are tombs know as arcosoli and do not belong to the original defensive structure, but were constructed between the 4th and the 7th centuries.
Continuing the walking, there is the Temple of Concordia, probably the most impressive Greek Doric temple still extant in our day, after Athens's Parthenon. The structure was adapted as a Christian church, evidence of which can be seen in the tombs excavated in the ground. The oldest temple in Agrigento is, rather, that of Heracles or Hercules.
The Temple to Zeus - or Jove the Olympian - and the only remaining ruins of which are its base and principal altar, was one of the biggest Greek temples in Antiquity. Also worth seeing nearby are the Temple of Castor and Pollux (the Dioscuri); the Sanctuary dedicated to the goddesses of grain and vegetation (aka the Chtonic divinities) - Demeter and Persephone - who were worshipped with much devotion by the women in these parts; the Temple of Hephaestus or Vulcan, which faces the former temple across a pool that is fed by an aqueduct.