Agrigento

Today we move about an hour east to the town of Agrigento. We are going to stop along the way at the Stairs of the Turks or Scala dei Turchi. Its a white rock formation sticking out the side of the cliff. It’s get its name from the Turkish Pirates who would climb the rock to invade the town. We had a so so overpriced lunch on the beach. You pay for the views! I didn’t know much about Agrigento before we arrived. I knew there were some Greek temples to see. But that’s about it. Thankfully we had Lorenzo, our tour guide. Because we got a wonderful history lesson. He grew up in Agrigento, traveled the world, went to University in Paris and worked in London. Then he came back to Agrigento to give tours. He’s very good! We have so many good stories from him. He said that an American professor said if you want to study the Greeks or Greek architecture go to Sicily. As the Greeks were leaving Greece to escape fighting and find their own land. They sailed west towards Spain. Before they arrived in Spain they saw this island that was lush and green. Previous Greek explorers had already colonized Naxos, Syracuse and a few other cities on the East coast of Sicily. Agrigento was attractive because it has sandy beaches and very near the beach was a tall line of rocky mountains with a valley behind. The mountains would be a perfect natural defensive wall. This is were they decided to colonize the newest Greek colony, Agrigento. There were originally 10 temples dedicated to Greek gods across the natural defensive cliff in Agrigento. Today, there is 1 that is almost completely still in tact from the original build. Its called Cornelia. It’s never been destroyed. It changed from Greek, to Roman and then to a Christian church. 2 others are only partially constructed. They are the temple to Juno/Hera and the temple of Hercules. The last one that is apart of the protected national park is the fallen temple of Zeus. It was the largest temple ever built. It was 300 feet long and 30 feet tall. It was massive. Only the stairs and part of the foundation remain. What happened ? The people of Agrigento many years later used the materials to build other buildings in town!!!! I don’t think the temple of Zeus meant as much to them then as it would of today. Last year, some archeologist were digging next to Heras temple and found some small statues of Athena. When Greeks came to pray to the gods they would bring a offering. One type of offering was a figurine of the god who they were praying to. This discovery led the archeologist to go to the historical documents in the museum in Agrigento to read where it said this was Heras temple. After translating the document, they in fact discovered that the document had been translated incorrectly hundreds of years ago. Wow! THEN while they were reading the documents they found out that Hercules temple may not be Hercules. Lorenzo said they will continue to dig in June and find out more information.
His next story was that soldiers were paid in salt. Salt was very expensive at the time. Salt in Latin is Sal and in Italian it Sale. Sale - into Salary. It’s how the word Salary originated. Agrigento the town is built high up on a hill behind the defensive wall. It has forests, a salt and sulfur mine and of course miles of land for farming. The views of the Mediterranean Sea are beautiful. We had a wonderful dinner in town and slept at another agriturismo along the sea. Ciao.Read more