Valle dei Templi

Temple of Concordia

 Imagine driving down the road, just looking around and suddenly you see this magnificent Greek temple up on a hill.  Just driving down the road and there it is bigger than life.  Amazing! 

Temple of Concordia

 

We took the bus from Licata to go see the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento.  Our intent was to do that the first day we were in Licata, but we missed the bus because we could not find the bus station!!  As it turned out it rained all day, so we were glad we didn't find the bus station.  However, once it quit raining we set out walking to make sure we knew where the bus station was for the next day.  We did not want to miss the bus two days in a row.  Don't you know we still could not find the darn place.  Fortunately, for us when we stopped to ask someone, this Italian fellow decided it was easier to just show us where to go.  So he kindly took us by the hand and led us to the bus stop.  We were very grateful because we definitely would have missed that bus a second time!

Temple of Heracles (Hercules)

The Valley of the Temples is just outside the city of Agrigento, which was in the 6th century BC a Greek town called Akragas.  They were fairly prosperous due to good farm land so the town went about building temples to their Gods.  The fact that even portions of those temples remain after all this time is amazing.  Even more astonishing is the preservation of the Temple of Concordia.  This temple received some special care as it was later consecrated as a Christian Basilica in the 6th century AD.  Fortunately, that gave this temple some "protected" status. 

Southern walls of Akragas

The entire city was fortified by man made walls that were incorporated with the natural stone.  It had a naturally defensible position, nestled on the hill in between valleys.  The temples are spread out over a large area with the most impressive being at the top of the hill.  We made a decision fairly quickly to take a taxi to the top and walk down.  The other choice is to walk up and then back down - so starting at the top was a no brainer for us.  

 
 

Agrigento

The area around Agrigento is beautiful and the city is quite large.  We did not visit the city but spent the day instead visiting the temples... next time.  So we finally saw what we wanted to see and now will move on from Licata.  Bad weather is coming so we want to make it as far as we can up the coast before we get stuck.