Our second full day in Sicily began with a two-hour bus ride from Palermo to Agrigento to see the remarkable Valley of the Temples.   These Greek ruins date from the 5th Century BCE, the era when Sicily was called Magna Graecia because it was under the control of Greece.  Our guide Claudio reminded us that the best Greek ruins are in Sicily.  This UNESCO site—the largest archeological site in Europe—covers 3200 acres and includes the ruins of seven temples.  Oh, and it is not in a valley, but sits on a ridge overlooking a valley with modern-day Agrigento in the distance.

Of course, like everything in Sicily, these temples went through several historical periods. After the Greeks, the Romans took over the temples and renamed them for their gods and goddesses. Finally, as Christianity spread to Sicily, one of the temples was used as a church while others were dismantled.

All the temples are of Doric design, which if my high school Social Studies memory serves, is the least ostentatious of the Greek column types.  Ionic and Corinthian columns feature scrolls and leaves respectively.

The size of the Valley of the Temples is daunting, especially on a cloudless summer day.  Moving like a herd of turtles, we gamely hiked up the hill while our colorful guide Claudio held up a red chopstick for us to follow.  We gazed upon the remains of the Temple of Juno and then turned to survey the enormous stretch of the site. 

We continued our walk along the cobblestone road until we arrived at the majestic Temple of Concordia, which was converted into a Christian church in the 6th century CE, but was restored to its original Greek form in 1785. The structure features six Doric columns at each end and thirteen along each side.  These pillars are 20 feet high, and the temple is 55 feet wide and almost 130 feet long.  It is impressive.

Beyond this temple, we toured the expansive necropolis (literally “the city of the dead”) where Christians who later lived here used the walls and stone below them to carve out tombs for themselves and their families. Just the vaults remain, thankfully.

Historians estimate that 200,000 people lived in Agrigento in the 5th century BCE.  The expanse of the archeological site of the Valley of the Temples gives one a sense of how important and thriving this city was when it was a Greek settlement.

Yet now we see the impressive pillars and the ruins of huge temples, built by man to satisfy their gods. It puts one in mind of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous sonnet Ozymandias, written in 1818.

“I met a traveler from an antique land/ Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/ Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, / Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,/ And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,/ Tell that its sculptor well those passions read/ Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,/The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

“And on the pedestal these words appear:/”My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”/No thing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/ The lone and level sands stretch far away.”