Day Trip to Agrigento’s Valley of the Temples in Sicily

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For our last full day in Sicily, I planned that we would go on our second guided excursion, our second tour with Francesca Lombardo of Sicilian Guide, this one a full day to the ancient city of Agrigento, or more exactly, to the Valley of the Temples that is found outside the modern city of Agrigento.

Francesca met us outside our bed & breakfast, and we climbed into her trusty Range Rover, driven by her husband Cataldo, and off we went. It was a better than two hour drive to Agrigento, going southward pretty much right through the middle of the island of Sicily. I don’t remember too much other than that it was a very relaxing ride through mountains and past many farms and that sort of thing. We did get stopped by the police and they very carefully checked Cataldo’s license – I don’t remember what was the problem exactly (probably a surge in smuggling of some sort), but I do remember that it was something Francesca and Cataldo were used to, and they had cautioned us beforehand to just keep quiet and all would be well. And all was well.

We arrived at the Valley of the Temples in the late morning, and Francesca immediately took to leading us down the long dirt road that takes you past all the historic ruins. We passed by the Temple of Juno and the Temple of Concordia. The latter is where the Fallen Angel sculpture by Igor Mirotaj has been placed. It really looks like it fits in with the ancient buildings – I had no idea that it was a modern sculpture.

Later we reached the site where the monumental Temple of the Olympian Zeus was to have stood. I say “was to have stood” because it was never finished – if it had been, it would have been a truly colossal temple, many times larger than the Temple of Concordia, for example. All that remains of what was finished now is the foundation. Francesca promised that we would get to see a restored Atlas, one of a series of figures that buttressed just one story of the building, in the Agrigento Archeological Museum.

Francesca phoned Cataldo, and he met us and we drove to the museum. I would say it was not huge – not on a level with the collection in the museum on the Island of Delos, for example. But we did enjoy seeing some of what has survived over the centuries. And seeing the surviving Atlas from the Temple of Zeus gave me a better idea of the scale of how huge that building had been if they had finished it.

Once we had finished, Cataldo and Francesca drove us to one of the nearby restaurants – I don’t remember which one, but I think it was their favorite in the area. It was a very good meal – I had squid ink pasta, although this was the sort where the pasta is actually made with squid ink, rather than covered with a sauce made from the ink.

With lunch over, it was time to get back on the road and head back to Palermo. I took a nap on the way back. Francesca asked where we would like to be dropped off, so we had them drop us downtown, near a place where we could get some refreshing granita to conclude our afternoon.

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