Greek Temples in Sicily

On our travels across southern and western Sicily we've seen many Greek temples, and the Greek presence in Sicily is hard to understate.  The Greeks colonized Sicily starting around 700BC.  On the east side, Sircusa (Syracuse to you and me) was once the most powerful city in the Greek world, eclipising even Athens in its power and status.  On the south is Agrigento.  At one point it, Siracusa, and Athens were the 3 most powerful cities.  So there are plenty of Greek ruins here and some say the best ruins are in Sicily.

To save you the Odyessy of slogging through countless photos of Peggy or me in front of a pile of old rocks I've organized them into 5 categories:

• The intact
• The reconstructed
• The rubble pile
• The incomplete
• How did they build that?

The intact

The most impressive temples that have remained intact for over 2,000 years are in Argigento in the Valley of the Temples.  We were here after our visit to the Roman mosaics that Peggy previously wrote about.  Getting here was interesting as Google Maps decided the best way to avoid some road construction was to send us on a road that was last paved decades ago and has spent the ensuing time working vary hard to revert to the rolling and rutted goat path it once was.  We got very lucky in finding a parking spot near our B&B, and I made the executive decision that the car shall not be moved until we leave town the next day.

Anyway, from the terrace of our B&B we could see the sequence of temples as they progressed down the ridge below.  We parked at the bottom and took a taxi up to the top, allowing us to walk downhill through the temples.  Watching the taxi drivers figure out who, in the group of tourists clustered around the taxi stand, got into which taxi was another wonderful exercise in loud animated Italian conversation with lots of hand gestures.

At the top of the hill is the Temple of Juno, built in 460 BC.  It stood until 1500 when an earthquake brought most of it to the ground.  The remaining columns are still impressive, as Peggy shows below.

Downhill from Juno is the even more impressive Temple of Concordia, one of the best preserved Greek temples anywhere.  The structure has been used for centuries.  In 597 the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius outlawed all pagan religion and the structure became a Christian church, the Church of St. Peter and Paul.  Some modifications were made indoors, including filling the gaps between the inner columns to create a central nave of the church.  It was used this way for almost 1,200 years.  Then in 1788, when a revival of all things Greek and Roman was all the rage, the "new" Christian bits were removed and reverted back to its original Greek state.

The reconstructed

From Agrigento we headed west to Selinunte, a sleepy fishing town also on the south coast.  This was another prosperous Greek settlement with its own collection of temples.

Here, the temples are given generic names instead of ascribing them to Greek gods.  The first one we came to is Temple E and it is amazing.

Here one can wander through the temples to get an up-close view.  The only problem is that this temple was reconstruced from the rubble in the 1950's.  Back then archeologists were into putting the pieces back together so it looks impressive, but may not be accurate to what was originally there.  This practice is now frowned upon and temples are left in whatever state they are found.

The rubble pile

After Temple E are Temples F and G - both still big rubble piles.  The most impressive is Temple G, which was not finished but would have been one of the largest temples in the Greek world.  It was fascinating to wander though the piles of huge stones and think of what once stood there.

Notice the square notches in the middle of the cylindrical pieces, and how the columns are not fluted like those from the Valley of the Temples - these are hints at how the temples were constructed, as I'll explain below!

The incomplete

The next day were were in Segesta, a town settled by people from Asia Minor (think Turkey) who adopted the ways of the Greeks.  Here is another amazing intact yet incomplete temple.  It was constructed to impress the Athenians and convince them to form a pact to defend Segesta from Selinunte and the Carthaginians.  This one is in up in the hills in the central north-west part of Sicily.

The temple has stood intact since 420 BC.  But there are indications that it was never finished.  Below one can see the tabs on the stones forming the foundations of the temple.  Ropes would have been wrapped around these to aid in moving them from the quarry into place.  Once in place they would have been chiseled off, but that didn't happen here.

Below, notice that the columns of the temple are not fluted like the ones in the first photo above of the Temple of Concordia.  The column pieces were first moved into place and only then were the fluted channels carved.  When fluted like this, our eyes focus on the vertical lines of the column, not the horizontal lines separating the column pieces.

How did they build that?

My cousin Trevor could sell you a large Caterpillar that could move these stones, but that wasn't an option back then.  So how do you move a giant cylinder or rectangle of stone?  Either make the stone the wheel OR add a wheel - these reconstructions from the Valley of the Temples show how clever the Greeks were.

One way to lift a stone to rest above the columns is the carve a "U" into the side, then loop rope around that.  The Greeks were well aware of the value of using a pulley.  Much of this was figured out by Archimedes, who was from Siricusa.

We saw stones with these "U" carvings all over the place - this one from Selinunte.

So if you're looking for Greet temples,  consider heading to Sicily!
~ Eric