If you travel to Sicily and you are interested in history, Agrigento is a must-go. It’s one of oldest town in Sicily. For us, we really wanted to see the Valley of the Temples.

We travelled from Ortigia to Agrigento with our rental car. I probably mentioned this in my previous posts. If you consider to drive in Sicily, it’s not a problem at all. The roads are fantastic. The most difficult part probably is driving in the little towns on their tiny narrow stone streets. 🙂

Anyway, the Valley of the Temples is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Of course, it has to be! The Archaeological park is big, full of Greek temples and ruins. It took us more than half a day to walk around it. They do have a shuttle bus you can take in the park if you don’t want to walk that much. Although it was such a hot day, we enjoyed every minute.

Temple of Juno is the first temple we saw in the park. It’s the closest one to the entrance. It is also called Temple of Hera Lakinia. It was built around 450BC.  Part of it was destroyed during an earthquake. It has rectangle shape, six columns on the short side and 13 on the long side.

Follow the path, we walked pass some artwork, olive grove and sculptures. It was a beautiful day.

We could see the Temple of Concordia from far away. It felt unreal when we saw it standing there against the blue sky and the modern city on the left. Well, it’s one of the best preserved Greek temples in the world. It was built in 430BC. The shape is exactly the same as the Temple of Juno. In 6th century, it was converted to a Christian church. The name, Concordia, was named after the Roman Goddess of harmony.

One other temple you should visit is the Temple of Olympian Zeus.  It’s the largest temple in Sicily if I remember correctly. However, there is not much left. From what we heard, the temple was never finished. Later on, it was almost completely destroyed by the earthquake. However, we did see the giant atlas there.

On the way back from Agrigento, we stopped at Villa Romana del Casale. Another amazing Roman villa. The mosaics are impressive. There are total 3000sq metres of mosaic flooring. When we entered the room, I was like “Wow”. Although we have seen amazing mosaics in Cyprus, this one is as good. It also has the famous “Bikini girls” and “Four seasons”. However, the most impressive one for me is the “The Big Game Hunt”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the information about how long “The Big Game Hunt” is. It’s magnificent, the colour, the story and the technique behind it.

To be continued…