Sicily was once part of Magna Graecia’ – greater Greece – and its Greek remains are as fine as anything one can find in present-day Greece. The temple of Segesta, the acropolis and temples at Selinunte, the theatre at Syracuse are just the tip of the iceberg of what Sicily can offer in terms of classical Greek monuments. And then when one gets on to the Roman period…

What could we select in this cornucopia of marvels? Agrigento was on the way to our destination of Syracuse for the New Year and it was well-chosen.  Imagine a two-hours walk through a valley of temples each one more fascinating than the other: a stroll through an open-air museum of some of the finest buildings from ancient times.

Agrigento was founded as a Greek colony with the name of Akragas in 581 BC. Under its tyrant Terone its power extended to Sicily’s northern coasts. In 480 BC it won a memorable victory over the Carthaginians. It was in the fifth century BC that Akragas obtained its maximum splendour and it was during this time that the temples were built  These included the  temple of Olympian Zeus, one of the major achievements of Grecian architecture, unfortunately now just a mass of stones collapsed as a result  of several earthquakes. In the rubble I noted a Telamone, or stone giant, which had supported the temple roof but was now laying a rest for many centuries after his labours.

The best preserved temple is that of Concord thanks to its being reused as a Christian church. I wish the Christians had done that to more temples instead of using them as a quarry..

The temple of Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri is perhaps the most familiar thanks to its souvenir cork models one of which I had as a child. It’s slightly disappointing to realise that the temple is a mid-nineteenth hypothetical reconstruction and, in fact, mixes up Ionic and Doric elements!

There’s also the temple of Hera and that of Heracles not to be missed.

There’s so much more to see. For example, the sanctuary of Ctnoie, the tomb of Terone and the temple of Aesculapius. We could have spent days there but were just happy to soak in the afternoon atmosphere of a late December sunshine just at the time the almond trees were coming into bloom in the valley of the gods.

Half-way through the vale another wonder, this time natural, captured us. It was the garden of Kolymbethra which has been ranked as one of the most beautiful in Italy.

We are lucky to have the history of this magical place well-documented since classical times.

Diodorus Siculus writes about the renovation works of the city promoted by the tyrant Terone immediately after the Battle of Himera (480 BC) and mentions a

“… A large pool … with a perimeter of seven stages … twenty fathoms deep … where the aqueduct irrigate nursery of refined flora and abundant wildlife …”

In the same period the Kolymbethra was built, thanks to the help of many slaves captured in battle, it was possible to construct the superlative temples and the hypogea, or artificial tunnels with the function of collecting the waters that oozed from calcarenite porous rock, to convey them, through a system of tunnels, from the hill towards the Kolymbethra basin, constantly feeding the pool. The garden, in addition to being a holiday resort for the aristocracy, was also a meeting place for all the inhabitants of the classical city: here, in fact, women gathered to wash clothes and anyone who wanted to cool off in the clear waters of the swimming pool.

A century after the Battle of Himera, the basin was buried and transformed into a vegetable garden, thus becoming a rich arable area. The presence of the hypogea, whose original function was adapted to agricultural use, was fundamental; the water conveyed by these aqueducts fed a small basin, located next to the mouth of an underground, which was used to irrigate the garden. This system still works today, keeping the land arable.

Subsequently, between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the cultivation of fruit trees spread in Sicily, it became a citrus garden.

In 1999 the Sicilian Region entrusted Kolymbethra to FAI, the Italian equivalent and associate of the National Trust FAI. And so it was that we showed our National Trust life membership cards and entered perhaps the most ancient continuously cultivated gardens we have ever trod.

What one sees today is a group of isolated temples. It must be remembered, however, that these temples were integrated into a populous city most of which remains to be excavated. What a wonderful ancient city Agrigento must have been!

Goethe, in his Italian travel book, bemoans the fact that his visit to ancient Agrigento was delayed by his guide wanting to show him modern Agrigento.  We in retrospect were disappointed that we found that by not visiting mediaeval and modern Agrigento we missed out on a city filled with a lovely cathedral and some fine mediaeval streets. But with our time limit how could we avoid the wonders of ancient Greek temples?  In this we were totally in agreement with the then head of Bagni di Lucca Villa post office who we met quite by chance as were exiting the bewitching valley.