No Aggro at Agrigento

Friday, 20 October 2017 
From Niscemi we headed west and stopped in at the famous archaeological site of Agrigento, the Valley of the Temples, dated between 4th and 6th century BCE.

This is the Temple of Juno (the Roman name) or the Temple of Hera (Greek name) ~450BCE.

This is the Temple of Cocordia ~440BCE.  This temple was converted into a Christian basilica in the 6th century dedicated and thus survived the destruction of pagan places of worship. The spaces between the columns were filled with walling, altering its Classical Greek form (which was what we saw in the Ortigia Duomo that had once been the Temple of Athena). The Christian refurbishments were removed during the restoration of 1785.

The Temple of Castor and Pollux 5th Century BCE. The four surviving columns were restored in the 19th century.

After a hot, but enjoyable afternoon at Agrigento, we went for another winery visit that we had arranged from Melbourne. This time it was at the winery Morgante which specialises in wine made Nero D’Avola. Like so many wineries in Sicily, it originally produced low quality table wine, but changed to producing high quality wines back in the 90s. Interestingly, the wines they produce that they don’t consider high enough quality for their bottled wine, they sell to the locals. People come with their jerry cans and fill up like at a petrol station. Even their ‘inferior’ wines are likely to be way better than standard plonk, so this is great for the locals and keeps the winery closely connected to the local community

Then onto Planeta Estate winery where we stayed for two nights.

The winemaker had come to Melbourne some years ago and put on a dinner and it was actually that night that first put the thought of going to Sicily in our heads. This was our lovely dinner the first night.