Ancient Greece meets modern Italy: apartment blocks in the town of Agrigento in southern Sicily overlook the Valley of the Temples site of ancient Graeco-Roman Akragas or Agrigentum and the scattered and weathered remains of the vast Temple of Olympian Zeus or Jupiter, built around 480 BC and one of Greek antiquity’s largest Doric structures.
Agrigento, Sicily, Italy: modern apartment blocks overlook tumbled remains of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, one of Greek antiquity’s largest Doric structures, in the Valley of the Temples, site of the ancient city of Akragas. The Temple of Olympian Zeus or Jupiter was built in the late 400s BC. The unusual design included an external wall instead of an open colonnade, with Doric half-columns on all sides. The sculptured front pediment depicted the Fall of Troy and the Gigantomachy: mythical giants, often with snakes for legs, who fought the Olympian gods. The temple’s upper parts were held up by colossal Atlas figures about eight meters (26 ft) high - possibly ‘barbarian’ Carthaginians defeated at the Battle of Himera in 480 BC. Captured Carthaginians may have been further humiliated by being forced to build the temple. They probably never completed it and the ruins were diminished by stone being taken for other projects. This view of weathered walls and lichen-covered blocks shows bricks filling holes left by missing stone. Akragas, founded circa 580 BC by colonists, was a prosperous leading Greek port city. Its growth froze when Carthage sacked it in 406 BC and although it did thrive again, it never recovered its status. In the 3rd century BC, it changed hands several times as Rome and Carthage fought the Punic Wars. Rome ultimately triumphed, renamed Akragas as Agrigentum and allowed its people to become Roman citizens. After Rome fell, Agrigentum was ruled in turn by Vandals, Ostrogoths and the Byzantine Empire. Saracens who captured it in 828 AD were replaced in turn by Normans, who changed its name again, to Girgenti. Much of the vast site of ancient Akragas is yet to be excavated, but its monumental Doric temples are among the best-preserved ancient Greek buildings outside Greece. The ruins are now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Size: 4106px × 2732px
Location: Valley of the Temples, Agrigento, Sicily, Italy.
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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