Agrigento & Caltagirone Tour

The Valley of the Temples is the site of Akragas, an ancient city founded in the year 581 BC by colonists from Gela and Rhodes. Its history lasted for more than a thousand years and ended between the VII and the IX century AD, when its inhabitants moved to the Girgenti hill, that is on the most western end of the area where the ancient Greek city used to be built. The ancient classical city which stretched between the Rupe Atenea hill and the Ridge of the Temples, shows the remains of its impressive buildings in what we call today the Valley of the Temples, a unique art heritage.

The Valley of the Temples covered only the area between the Ridge of the Temples and the Rupe Atenea hill. It includes also the surrounding area where you find the necropolis and the extra-moenia sanctuaries (that is outside the ancient city walls), and the rivers Akragas and Ipsas flow down to the sea by San Leone beach. The environmental and natural balances are strongly enhanced by the intervention of man. They fuse admirably together with the archaeological monuments, solemn like the temples, discrete and suggestive like the necropolis and the complex hypogees.

However most of the ancient classical and Roman city is still hidden under almond trees and hundred year old olive trees. Even today the remains come to the surface of this secret reserve to show more of its own past. In the middle of the 1900’s an aerial view showed one of the most interesting sides of the town: the Hippodamian street plan in the area between the southern ridge and the foot of the Rupe Atenea hill.