Agrigento Discovery Guide

The Temple of Concordia is among the best-preserved Doric temples anywhere, and it is one of eight strung along a ridge above the sea — a skyline of fifth-century BC temples that nothing else in Italy can match.

The friction is the modern town. It is a concrete ridge-top city with a traffic problem and a reputation, largely earned, for having built where it should not have, and most visitors write it off and see the temples in three hours from a coach.

The better way is to sleep here and go down to the Valley twice: once early, before the heat and the groups, and once after dark in summer, when the temples are floodlit and nearly empty. Sicily's other Greek sites, Syracuse included, are day trips from the same base.

The Valley, twice

Once from the eastern gate in the first hour of opening, walking west along the ridge past Juno, Concordia and Heracles with the sea on your left. Once again after dark in summer, when the site reopens floodlit and the crowds have gone.

The Olympieion

The western end is a field of enormous broken blocks rather than a standing building. It rewards the effort of working out what it was — the scale only registers when you stand beside a fallen capital.

The museum

Go after the park, not before. The reassembled telamon and the marble ephebe make sense of what you have just walked through.

Kolymbethra

A sunken garden of citrus, almond and olive inside the park, fed by Greek irrigation tunnels. It is shaded, quiet and the best place in the site to stop.

Pirandello

The birthplace at Caos, ten minutes out of town, with the pine and the sea below.

The coast

San Leone for the beach and the evening passeggiata, and the white terraces of the Scala dei Turchi west along the shore.

Agrigento is a working provincial town that happens to own a world-famous ruin, and it has never entirely worked out what to do about that.

The relationship between the two is visible from the ridge: apartment blocks from the boom years march down toward the archaeological zone, and the argument about where building should have stopped has been running since the landslide of 1966. Locals will raise it themselves.

The town above is livelier than its reputation. The Via Atenea, the single long street through the old centre, fills in the evening, and the surrounding province is deeply traditional, agricultural and much poorer than eastern Sicily. Emigration emptied it for a century and the effects are still obvious in the villages inland.

Visitors are normal here but not catered to in the way they are on the east coast, and outside the festival weeks very little of the town is arranged around them.

The archaeological park is a fragile site under heavy use, and the sensible rules are the obvious ones.

Stay on the marked paths. The ground between the temples is unexcavated in places and the calcarenite is soft enough to damage underfoot. Do not climb on fallen blocks, however inviting the Olympieion field looks.

Water is genuinely scarce here — supply interruptions are a normal part of local life in summer — so treat it as the limited resource it is.

The Scala dei Turchi has been closed and restricted repeatedly because visitors climbing the marl terraces were eroding them and staining the white rock. Respect whatever access limits are posted; they exist for good reason.

Spending in the town rather than only at the site matters more here than in Taormina or Venice, because this is a poor province and most day visitors leave without buying anything at all.

February brings the almond blossom and the Mandorlo in Fiore festival, with the temples surrounded by flowering trees and the folklore groups in town. It is the most distinctive week of the Agrigento year.

April, May and October are the best all-round months: warm, dry, green in spring, and comfortable for the long exposed walk through the park.

Early July is the feast of San Calogero, the biggest local occasion.

July and August are very hot and the park is hard work by day, but the site opens in the evenings and the temples floodlit after dark are worth arranging a stay around.

November to January is quiet, mild and cheap, with short days, occasional heavy rain and plenty of sun between.

What a visitor actually pays in Agrigento

Agrigento is one of the cheaper bases in Sicily — well below Taormina and under Syracuse too. Rates rise sharply for the February festival week and in August. Staying down at San Leone costs less than the ridge and puts you on the beach, but leaves you dependent on the bus.