The Church of SS Trinitá di Delia near Castelvetrano

Northwest of the the town of Castelvetrano one can find — if one looks patiently — a little known and rarely visited Norman church, which has retained its pure Arabic appearance: SS Trinitá di Delia. The building is on private grounds, and one has to beg for permission to visit and get the key in a large manor house nearby (now a restaurant catering to weddings etc.). The building shows how close North Africa was in the 12^th century....

Originally the bare, small cruciform interior may already have contained a tomb of some saintly Sufi (?) following Islamic tradition. Today it contains three Baroque(?) sarcophagi (unidentified) and a small altar.

 The three girls who opened the place for us.

Selinunte-Selinus

We found a room in a hotel in the small "fishing" village Marinella — today they mainly fish tourists — near the ruins of the the large archeological area overlooking the sea. At sunset we walked down to the harbor. To the right the village climbs the hill, the acropolis of the Greek Selinus rises on the far promontory. (Click on this composite photo).  

The little harbor of Marinella at night. The crane demonstrates the ongoing building of more tourist hotels. 

The archeological area consists of two parts separted by the shallow valley of the river Gorgo Cotone. One arrives at the eastern city (530-450 BC), the walled, slightly higher acropolis, furher west, can be reached by a minibus. All temples in Selinunte are in ruins, except Temple E, dedicated to Hera, seen here, which was reassembled in recent times. The jumble of drums and columns in the foreground belong to its neighbor, Temple F (mid 6^th century).  

Another view of Temple E with the sea in the background.  

 The huge drums of the third temple, G, hundred meter north of temples E and F. Temple G (520-470 BC), dedicated to Apollon, was one of the largest Greek temples ever built (110 x 50 meters), only the Artemis temple in Ephesus was 5 meters longer... A gigantic prestige monument to the power of tyrant, it was unfinished when the Carthagians under Hannibal destroyed Selinus in 409 AD, eventually it collapsed in a massive earthquake.

 The western portico of the reconstructed Hera Temple, Temple E in late afternoon.

The acropolis across the river requires an archeological specialist to decipher. part of the settlement surrounding another three ruined temples has been excavated. Nothing is standing except for the impressive walls on the eastern side of the precinct towards the river valley. Far in the north is a sanctuary of Demeter Malophores (the apple-carrying Demeter), Hekate and Zeus-Melichios which is of great archeological interest. It was too hot to walk the 2 kilometers there.

Agrigento-Akragas

There is only one road along the coast from Selinunte to Agrigento. In the beginning it winds through pretty but flat farm land, further east the contryside becomes rather uninteresting. Large plastic greenhouses cover the landscape like lakes....

All the more impressive is the sweeping approach to Agrigento, which crowned by its duomo climbs a steep mountainside jutting towards the sea. A sweeping autostrada bridge swings across the valley in which lie widely spread the temples of the Greek city of Akragas — headland in Greek Barbara tried valiantly to find the hotel I had selected in the narrow streets of medieval Agrigento, somehow we once more got completely lost in the steep maze of lanes. Eventually we retreated to a hotel in the beach town of San Leone.

The acropolis of Akragas is buried under the modern hill town. The duomo covering the site of its main temple. The valley of the Akragas river below, once part of the walled antique town, is now covered with archeological sites, necropolis, remnants of a Roman town, and the ruins of the surviving temples strung along the southern city wall atop a 2-km-long cliff.

The "Tempio di Concordia" (Temple F, 425 BC) is the best preserved temple of Akragas. It was probably dedicated to the Dioscures, Castor and Pollux. Having lost its plaster coating, it has the siena-brown color of the local rock. It encloses remnants of a Christian church, probably the reason for its preservation. Farther east along the cliff wall the Temple of Hera Lakinia (Temple D) can be seen.

The columns of the Temple of Hera Lakinia above the ruins of the ancient city wall. Atop the southern spur of the modern town, seen in the distance, on the other side of the river lies a very old sanctuary of Demeter surrounded by a necropolis.  

From a stand of neglected apricot trees rises the western side of the Hera Temple (Temple D).

 View west from the stones of the city wall near the Hera temple towards the Tempio di Concordia.

 A half-kilometer west of the Concordia Temple are the few columns remaining of a temple to Heracles and the base of the Temple of the Olympic Zeus, (Temple B) seen in this photo. The Olympeion was to celebrate the victory of the Greeks over the Carthagians near Himea in 480 BC. Laid out to be even larger than the Apollo temple of Selinus it boasted gigantic male caryatids between half-columns enclosing three equally wide,closed naves. A completely unique design im Magna-Gaecia. Unfortunately it was razed by the Carthagians in 406 BC before it could be completed.

One of the giant caryatids on the ground near the Olympeion in the evening light. 

 The columns of the Hera Temple shading us against the hot aftenoon sun.

The long hike and the muggy heat had taken its toll. While we were resting, an ambulance, sirens screaming, drove up to rescue a fallen tourist...

Next day we drove to Syracuse without stopping, circling around Ragusa, Noto, the highly industrialized Gela, the coast between Gela and Syracuse, and a number of lesser archeological sites