Valley of the Temples (Valle dei Templi), Agrigento

The Valley of the Temples (Valle dei Templi) on the southern coast of Sicily near Agrigento occupies a ridge along the edge of the ancient Greek city of Akragas, founded around 580 BC and once home to perhaps 200,000 people. Most of the surviving monuments date from the 5th century BC, the city's golden age under tyrants such as Theron, before its sack by Carthage in 406 BC. Despite the name, the temples stand on a ridge rather than in a valley, the result of a 19th-century mistranslation that has endured. The 1,300-hectare archaeological park strung along the Via Sacra contains seven major Doric temples in varying states of preservation. The Temple of Concordia (circa 440-430 BC) is the best preserved of all, its 34 columns and entablature standing almost complete because the structure was converted into a Christian basilica in the 6th century AD, which protected it from quarrying. Nearby rise the Temple of Juno (Hera Lacinia), scarred by fire from the Carthaginian siege, and the Temple of Heracles, the oldest on the site, with eight re-erected columns. At the western end lie the colossal ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, intended to be among the largest Greek temples ever built, supported by giant telamon figures of which one reconstruction lies among the rubble. The park also encompasses the Temple of the Dioscuri, the Temple of Hephaestus, archaic sanctuaries to the chthonic deities, a Hellenistic-Roman quarter, and early Christian catacombs cut into the rock. Excavation and conservation have continued since the 18th century, and the Kolymbethra Garden, an ancient irrigated valley restored by the FAI, offers a shaded contrast to the exposed ridge. Managed today as a regional park, the site is among the most visited archaeological landscapes in Italy and central to Agrigento's identity.