Agrigento

The three of us got along so well last weekend in Palermo that we wanted to do it again and since I didn't know Agrigento yet, I wanted Agrigento as a destination.

Agrigento is a city with approximately 55 thousand inhabitants located on the southern coast of Sicily, 4km from the sea.

The city is located at an altitude of 213m on a rocky hill that slopes steeply to the east and north and slowly to the west and is surrounded by two rivers, which come together below the city, halfway to the sea.

The urban area is divided into two halves by a deep valley, the northwestern part of which rises up to 328 m and the southeastern part up to 351 m above sea level.

The site was probably occupied early on by a settlement of the Sikans, as the system of corridors carved deep into the rock is attributed to them. Additionally, a pre-Greek necropolis was found west of the city.

Around the year 582 B.C. In the 4th century BC, emigrants from Gela and Rhodes built the city of Akragas here, which was later called Agrigentum in Roman times.

When the Arabs conquered Agrigentum in 829 AD, only a village remained on the site of the ancient city on the northern hill of the ancient settlement, the former Acropolis. Under the name of Kerkent or Gergent, a Berber settlement arose there, which developed into a center of Muslim settlement in Sicily and competed with the Arab Palermo for dominance.

In 1087 Gergent was conquered by the Normans. Roger II established a bishopric here. Gergent became a wealthy city through trade with North Africa and agriculture, among other things.

With the expulsion of the Arabs by Frederick II, the city lost economic importance. Therefore, little was built in the following centuries. Under Spanish and Bourbon rule, Girgenti, as the city was now known, became a less important provincial town again. Only sacred architecture experienced an upswing from the 16th century onwards. In 1927 the city adopted the re-Latinized name Agrigento.Read more