May 16, 2023

May 16, 2023

We woke up to cloudy weather, but it is not raining. Aimee and I have our fingers crossed it stays that way. We need no rain for our outdoor museum visit this morning.

From our Agrigento accommodation we can see the Valley of the Temples Archeological Park, a World Heritage Site, on the hill above. The Greek temples were lit up last night.

We met our guide and we drove up to the park. Akragas was the third largest city in the Greek world. At its peak there were more Greeks in Sicily than in the homeland. The ridge top or acropolis held a long line of temples devoted to the many deities in the Greek religion. The population lived in the valley surrounding it. A few miles away was the seaport. We started at the east end and walked downhill to the other side. 

We began with a visit to the Temple of Juno. This temple was re-erected. Sicily is very seismically active and the majority of temples collapsed over the centuries. Oftentimes the carved stones were repurposed over the years for new structures. We are lucky there are any original stones left. In Sicily the local limestone, while easy to carve, does not weather well. After construction the temple would have been faced with plaster to mimic the marble of the Greek homeland. It also would have been gaily painted.

The Temple of Juno is unusual in that it is fronted by a large stone sacrificial altar. Most every temple would have had one but these stones were the easiest to carry away.

We then walked down the ridgeline following the outer wall. Even in ancient times it was a dangerous world. There were enemies all around. Besides rival Carthage and the other Phoenicians, there was also warfare with the other Greek city-states. For protection the entire acropolis was surrounded by a wall. In medieval times, the local Christian community used the ridge top as a cemetery. We see many burial niches carved in the wall and rock outcroppings.

Continuing on, we pass lots of almond and pistachio trees. We also see the Acanthus flowers blooming. The leaves of this weed are the ones portrayed in Corinthian capitals, popular with the Romans. Here though the simpler Doric order capital predominates.

We soon come to the jewel of Sicily, the Temple of Concordia. It is probably the best-preserved Greek Temple anywhere. It is in great condition because it was converted into a church and maintained over the millennia. We can see arches cut into the inner sanctuary walls. This Cella or inner sanctum of a Greek temple would have contained a large cult statue. Unfortunately, none of these statues were found. Neither were any of the exterior pediment decorations.

Further along we come to the Temple of Hercules. Most of this temple lies scattered around. Only a few columns have been re-raised. We can see the notches used to align and lock the columns. We can also see some remnants of the white plaster used to face the columns.

Next we come to the Temple of Zeus, which was the largest temple ever built. It was constructed to celebrate the Greek victory over the Phoenicians of Carthage in 489 BC. Besides being immense, it had the unusual feature of having numerous figures of Atlas holding up the pediment around the facade. The temple is all rubble and only a few of the Atlas statues remain, all lying on the ground.

The Temple of Dioscura finishes our tour. Only a corner of columns has been raised. Outside the exit, we run into a line of Porsches leaving the parking lot; another car club event. Sicily must be a mecca for car clubs and rallies.

It is late and we have a long drive ahead, so we make a quick stop at a sandwich shop for lunch. Aimee and I split a ham and cheese Calzone. Delicious! My sister made me eat part of her Chocolate Pistachio Truffle.

We drove for a couple hours northeast into the middle of Sicily. Near the city of Piazza Amerina we find the road flooded for miles making travel slow. This is prophetic because that is key to our next site. We are visiting the World Heritage Site of Villa Romana de Casale. This is a massive Roman villa that was well preserved because it had been buried by a mudslide during a long-ago Sicilian rainstorm. Casale is the Pompeii of Sicily.

The roof and most of the walls of this villa were washed away by the landslide, leaving the mosaic floors. This villa easily has the largest intact set of Roman mosaics anywhere. Only in a few minor areas do we get any glimpses of how the walls were decorated.

We start our visit with the thermal baths that were an essential part of Roman life. We see the wood furnaces that were used to heat the warm air that circulated through the spa. It had three rooms of different water temperatures and a room for massage. Next to it is a gymnasium with a mosaic featuring a chariot race ala Ben Hur.

We then enter the villa through the grand entrance. It is a circle just like Italian villas today. I can easily imagine horse-drawn chariots arriving.

The center of the villa is an enormous columned peristyle hall encircling a grand fountain. The perimeter has a mosaic floor of the heads of wild animals of all sorts. Adjoining either side are guest rooms with mosaic floors of geometric patterns. Complicated floors were reserved for important spaces.

A dining room has a series of hunting scenes showing how the meat would have been captured. A similar room shows how fish were caught.

On one end of the peristyle courtyard is a great hall with an amazing 200-foot-long mosaic floor. It contains complicated scenes of wild animals, like ostriches, lions, and elephants being gathered from every corner of the known world and loaded onto ships for transportation.

The owner of the villa is unknown. Because of its palatial style, it was thought he must be one of the Tetrarch emperors of the late Roman Empire. This animal gathering scene strongly suggests it was someone involved in the collection of animals from distant lands for use in gladiatorial combats. That must have been very profitable business as the demand was probably insatiable. He might have been the Bill Gates of the Roman world.

The most popular room is one that has bikini clad women doing sports. And we thought that was a modern invention.

We next visit the owner's suites. Interestingly the male rooms have Playboy-like floor mosaics, while the wife’s is decorated with flowers and fruits.

The last room we view is the Basilica, or Great Hall. This would have been where business was conducted. It is the most lavish and the only one without a floor mosaic. Instead, the floor was constructed of solid marble slabs of various colors.

From the villa we need to drive southeast. Because of the flooding we encountered, we decide to take the long way around to the north, keeping to the highways as much as possible. We pass vast stretches of unforested land filled with farm fields. In Roman times, Sicily was the breadbasket of the Empire, at least until Egypt was conquered.

We stop for the night in the cute town of Noto. Our hotel is in the old section and we have a third-floor balcony overlooking the area. We have a nice dinner of Grouper and salad, followed by Cannoli for dessert. Cannoli and Ricotta cheese are Sicilian specialties. A Cannoli is a sugary ricotta mixture scooped into a fried wafer.