Agrigento (February 23)

Agrigento is situated on the southern most tip of Sicily and is home to the Valley of the Temples.  It is one of the main tourist attractions in all of Sicily because of how well the Greek temples are preserved, even better than the Parthenon or the Acropolis in Greece.  Why the term "valley" is used to describe the location of these temples is quite misleading, as the temples are situated on a mountain ridge with incredible views of the sea below.

The Valley of Temples includes seven different temples of Greek mythology, however we only had time to see three of them.  The first was the temple of Harrah (see left), a reluctant wife of Zeus.  It was constructed in the 5th century BC.  While there, several of the kids acted out scenes from the book Oedipus Rex, including the scene where Oedipus discovers that the man he's killed is his father, Laius, and the woman that he is married to, for whom she bore his four children, is his mother, Jokasta.  They needed some extra actors so I reluctantly agreed to play Jokasta.  Needless to say, given my role in the story, this tragedy soon turned into a comedy!

Our next temple visited was the Temple of Concordia, probably the best preserved of all the temples.  As a result it is "ranked among the most notable edifices of the Greek civilization existing today," according to Wikipedia.  At one point in its history, the Temple of Concordia was turned into a church.  The sepulchers are still visible to this day and date back to the Middle Ages.

Lastly, was the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the largest and most sprawling of all the temples.  It is considered the largest temple in the western Greek world, right here in Sicily.  The blocks used to build the temple and its surrounding buildings are enormous.  Richard Davis, our Greek teacher, says that in order for the blocks to be lifted and put in there proper places, Agrigento called upon the largest and strongest men.  The blocks, made out of sandstone, had carved out niches in them that helped secure the rope for which the men used to move the blocks.  Pretty amazing when you see one of these massive blocks about 64 cubic feet each.  To put things in further perspective, the picture at the left shows a statue of a mythological figure, called an Atlas, which rested on top of each of the 3-4 dozen 40-foot pillars to carry some of the load the temple itself.  The statue pictured is one we saw in the neighboring museum prior to going to the Valley of the temples.

This tree doesn't have much to do with our trip but I had never seen one like it and found it interesting.