The Park
The Valle dei Templi of Agrigento, established by a regional law in 2000, it preserves the monumental heritage of Akragas, one of the most important Greek colonies in the Mediterranean.
Listed in 1997 among the world heritage of humanity Inserted in 1997 among the world heritage of humanity in the list compiled by UNESCO, in 2015 it received the DEVU, a declaration of exceptional universal value, which rewards the quality of the services offered to visitors and the level of accessibility of the site.
History
Funded by Geloi in 580 B.C., which is endowed along the southern edge of the city, on the crest of a low hill, which seen from the modern city appears as a valley, the Valle dei Templi, place well known to the collective imagination. The city, immediately after its foundation, has an imposing city wall. This delimits an area of approximately 450 hectares and that it is adapted to the natural conformation of the calcarenitic bench on which the urban plant is arranged.
Beginning from the 550 a. C. they come started the yards of public building that in the arc of approximately a century they will make of Akragas one of the most monumental cities of Greek Sicily, as the so-called sanctuary of the Chthonic gods at the western end of the hill. From the end of the sixth century BC, when the temple of Hercules is erected, are built the imposing Doric temples that define a real sacred wall. Almost to represent the embrace of the gods to the city. Under the tyranny of Terone (488-472 a. C.) begins the construction of the Olympieion, one of the largest sacred buildings of the ancient world, to celebrate the victory of the Greeks over the Carthaginians in Himera (480 BC). With the huge spoils of war was made the Kolymbethra, a large artificial basin fed by the network of underground aqueducts attributed to the architect Feace.
The Temple of Juno and the Temple of Concord
After the end of the tyranny the city starts a democratic order and initiating the construction of the Temple of Juno and Temple of Concord, fundamental examples in the history of the development of the Doric style in the colonial field. These are the years in which the philosopher Empedocle lives and works, preceding the invasion of the Carthaginian troops, who destroyed the city in 406 BC. A new period of prosperity we find during the age of Timoleonte (338-334 BC). Thanks to the reconstruction of the walls and the new impulse to public and private construction. In 210 BC in fact, Rome conquers the city which takes the name of Agrigentum. Una serie di trasformazioni evidenti nel foro e nel Quartiere Ellenistico Romano denotano prosperità e la nuova impronta di Roma.
To this period belong the gymnasium and the Templar buildings known as the Oratory of Falaride and the Roman Temple, the latter rebuilt in the Julio-Claudian age at the center of a portico adorned with marble statues dressed in a toga. In the valley there are also important evidences of the late antiquity when an extensive necropolis, with sub divo tombs and funerary undergrounds dug into the rock, was planted on the southern hill.
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