We really prefer trains or buses for budget and carbon footprint reasons but sometimes they aren’t convenient to what we want to see. The Southern part of Sicily doesn’t have good transportation but it does have a lot of ancient Greek and Roman ruins that we really wanted to see. So we ended up renting a car for 2 days to get from one side of Sicily (Syracuse) to the other side (Trapani) and we were able to see a lot of stuff that isn’t easy to see without a car.
First stop was Villa Romana Del Casale. This was a hunters lodge and Animal trading post during Roman days. The Roman Emperors liked to have exotic African animals in their palaces so they believe that this place was a holding place for some of the animals being sold up North. These animal traders and hunters evidently got rich in this business and created a fancy villa with frescos and mosaic floors everywhere. At some point there was a mudslide that covered up this villa but that just preserved the floors until they were rediscovered centuries later. They are in pretty good shape for being covered by mud and they created some catwalks above them so you can see all the rooms without stepping on the floor mosaics. One mosaic took up a whole hallway – 200 feet long.
After having gelato for lunch we headed to Agrigento where we were going to spend the night. We quickly dropped off our bags and headed for the Valley of the Temples. This is a huge area with remains from Greek temples and Roman temples. Two of the temples were still in pretty good shape and made for some pretty awesome pics during twilight and after sunset. I took way too many pics but I will try to narrow it down to just a few here. The most intact temple (Temple of Concordia) started as a Greek Temple, was then used by the Romans, and then was converted into a Christian cathedral in the middle ages by filling in the walls between the columns. In the late 1700’s they decided that it really should be preserved as its original purpose and took out the walls between the Greek columns. Then 10 years ago, someone made a huge bronze statue of a warrior on his side that is in front of the temple. Not sure why it is there, but it makes some cool pics.
After a long walk to look at some less photogenic old temples, the sun started to set which gave us some great photo opportunities on the walk back to the car past the 2 best temples. It was also a full moon out which looked nice but doesn’t really translate to a good pic.
Next stop is the West coast of Sicily- Trapani.