The history of the Valley of the Temples

Akragas was founded around 582 BC by Greek colonists from Gela, themselves of Rhodian and Cretan origin. The location was ideal: a defensible hill between two rivers, close to the sea but sheltered from attack. Within a few generations the city grew enormously, counting — according to ancient sources — hundreds of thousands of inhabitants.

Its wealth came from trading grain, oil and sulphur, and from breeding horses famous throughout Greece. The poet Pindar called it "the most beautiful city of mortals". It was in this season of splendour that the great temples we still admire today took shape along the southern edge of the hill.

Akragas was a city of merchants, farmers, artisans and athletes. Its horsemen won the Panhellenic games, and its wealthiest citizens lived in proverbial luxury: it was said they built as if they would live forever and ate as if they would die the next day.

Alongside the free citizens lived thousands of slaves, many of them Carthaginian prisoners employed on the temple worksites. Daily life revolved around the agora, the sanctuaries and the religious festivals, especially those dedicated to Demeter and Kore, the goddesses of the earth worshipped above all by women.

The temples of the Valley are built in the Doric style, the most austere and solemn of Greek architecture, with fluted columns and simple capitals. They were made of soft local limestone, originally coated with white stucco and decorated in vivid colours, now vanished.

The Temple of Concordia is one of the best-preserved Doric temples in the world: it owes its survival to its conversion into a Christian church in the 6th century. The Temple of Olympian Zeus, by contrast, was designed as one of the largest ever conceived, but was never completed.

A unique feature of the Temple of Zeus were the telamons: gigantic human figures in stone, almost eight metres tall, set into the upper part of the building as if bearing its weight.

Many of the names by which we know the temples — of Juno, of Concordia, of the Dioscuri — are not the original ones. They were assigned in modern times, often on the basis of Latin inscriptions found nearby or of learned Renaissance readings, and do not reflect proven dedications.

That is why, in telling the story of the Valley, it matters to separate what is documented from what is modern reconstruction. Our audio guide follows that rule: it says plainly when a name is merely traditional and when an attribution is established.