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Agrigento Guide PDF Print
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Agrigento Guide

What are the places to visit in Agrigento? Here you can find a guide to Agrigento and useful information for restaurants, hotels , attractions, interesting sights to visit in Agrigento.

"I invoke the city of Persephone, the most beautiful of cities many hotels are men,
or friend of the pomp that in fertile Acragante of crude, you rise towers on the clivus;
O Lady, I like benevolent, and agree with you men and gods, from the Mida
Pito, likes and leaves of the crown himself, who won the Hellenes in the art which
Pallas day feral unearthed by twisting the dirge of the Gorgons. "
(Ode Pitia XII)

Exalting Mida, who won the Olympics, so Pindar sang Akragas, today's Agrigento, Agrigento in the fifth century BC, the provincial capital with about 60,000 inhabitants, was founded in the sixth century BC The city's long history is summarized in the various names that it had: Akragas was for the Greeks, the Romans Agrigentum, Kerkent for the Arabs, the Normans to Girgenti. Girgenti was also the official name of the city until 1929, when it changed its name in the current.

Located at 230 meters above sea level, on the hill of Girgenti, the city enjoys an excellent location. Famous for its beauty, its trade and its fabulous wealth, Agrigento was also a thriving cultural center, home of the philosopher Empedocles, attended by Simonides and Pindar, visited by Cicero, described by Virgil in the Aeneid. From the Middle Ages to the present day, has attracted and inspired many philosophers, writers, poets and painters. To cite just the most famous: Ludovico Ariosto, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Guy de Maupassant, Alexandre Dumas, Anatole France, Murilo Mendes, Lawrence Durrell, Francesco Lojacono, Nicolas de Stael, Salvatore Quasimodo, Luigi Pirandello.

Ancient historians and geographers, describe the wonders and riches of Akragas, a city with 300,000 inhabitants. Even Polybius, who visited Agrigento at the time of the Second Punic War - when the city was, after his great catastrophe, in a state of irreparable decay - but it celebrates the remains of the ancient splendor. In addition to the famous temples, among the most celebrated of the ancient aqueducts were Agrigento - built by the Phoenicians - which fed water to the homes and monumental fountains of the city. These water systems to remove water from the mountains behind the city, which then were covered with ancient woodland, so moist and fresh.

The Agora, spacious anything else ever, was adorned with monuments: the magnificent tombs of the Necropolis of the most illustrious and wealthy citizens, vied in splendor with the city of the living. Up there, where now stand the ruins of ancient walls, the Rupe Atenea, you could see the temples of Minerva, Jupiter and Jupiter Atabirio Polie: where now stands the cathedral stands the imposing Rocca. And down on the densely wooded mountain dell'ondeggiante, included in the wide circuit of many miles in diameter, the Rock of Athena at the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Acropolis from the Port of Gela - on top of another underground city - spread out across the city, full of magnificent buildings, cut into wide streets, shaded with myrtle, cedar, poplar.
The historic center of Agrigento essentially retains the urban layout of a typical Islamic city, with an irregular structure and an intricate network of streets, alleys and courtyards. It still includes buildings - churches, monasteries, convents, and palaces - that made the city of Girgenti a pearl of the Middle Ages. Although the center is degraded by time, and in need of renovation, you can still visit some of the major monuments, such as the Cathedral of St. Gerland, the Abbey-Monastery of the Holy Spirit, the gates of the city walls and several palaces. The result of building styles at totally different times, within the churches contain treasures of sacred art often unknown to the general public.
The visit of the town begins to Gate Bridge and winds its way through the via Atenea, heart of this historic part of Agrigento, long street full of beautiful period buildings and many religious buildings. It winds for almost all the winding axis of the city that departs from the monumental Gate Bridge or Port Atenea and streets adjacent Church of St. Peter's Monastery of the Holy Spirit, Celauro Palace, Church of San Francesco, Chiesa del Purgatorio , the mysterious hypogea.

Left immediately on the right complex of the former Civic Hospital, built in the sixteenth century near the church of St. John the Teutonic, now in ruins, on the right we take the narrow road that Porcello, through the old quarter of Pojo leads to the Abbey of the Holy Spirit, one of the most beautiful monuments in Sicily. Built in 1260, the complex is formed by the Church and the adjacent Cistercian Monastery. The Monastery, also called "the Great Abbey, dating back to 1290, and is embellished with a magnificent cloister quadrangle, one of the oldest and best preserved of Sicily. Inside are preserved frescoes dating from the XIV and XVI.
There s'inoltrerà ancient medieval village, passing through Santa Maria dei Greci. This church, built in the twelfth century, its foundations rest on the base of a Doric temple of the fifth century BC, which some believe to be Athena, the acropolis of Akragas. The visit will conclude at the Cathedral, founded in the late eleventh century by Bishop Gerland of Agrigento.

A second route, just as important and certainly indispensable, is the so-called archaeological walk leading to the Valley of the Temples. Here, in the eponymous Landscape and Archaeological Park, you can admire the "jewels" of Agrigento, ie the various Doric temples, among the most beautiful of Magna Graecia, which made and still make this city unique. And 'well-known that the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento is the epitome of classical Greek civilization in Sicily. Immersed in the magic of a landscape characterized by almond trees which are covered as early as January of a cloud of white fragrant white flowers, it stands on a hillside that slopes gently toward the sea, surrounded by beds of rivers and Akragas Hipsas.


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