The most spectacular Greek ruins aren’t found in Greece
Sicily is strewn with ancient Greek attractions and, with half the tourist crowds of Greece, they’re the most enjoyable, too.
The Sicilians are modest about their fabulous historical heritage. Chances are you haven’t heard of Selinunte in the island’s southwest, but this is the only ancient Greek city whose entire layout has been preserved.
The Temple of Hera in Selinunte. Credit: iStock
The foundations of Selinunte’s temples, aristocratic houses, public buildings, port facilities and manufacturing districts are spread across several hillsides. The most significant building is Temple E, whose 68 massive columns rise from skirts of wild poppies and delicate pink orchids.
Walk west from Temple E and you’ll likely have Selinunte to yourself. Admire clifftop views from what remains of Temple C, whose columns are golden-hued against the glittering blue Mediterranean.
Sacked by Hannibal in 409 BC and later devastated by an earthquake, Selinunte sank into dunes and became the Pompeii of the classical Greek world. Most of the city is so ruined only archaeologists make sense of it, but for visitors it gets top marks for its haunting atmosphere.
The ancient Greeks had a knack for superb architecture in superb landscape settings.Credit: iStock
You can wander amid temples that lie where they fell 2500 years ago. Columns lie in staggered sequences like toppled dominoes, bleached in the sun. Jasmine bushes drop delicate blossoms onto the ancient masonry, floral offerings to a fallen civilisation.
This is only one of Sicily’s outstanding ancient Greek sites, however. The colonising Greeks first settled in Sicily in 735 BC, and eventually Magna Graecia, the collective name for all its Italian colonies, became richer and more powerful than Greece itself.
The greatest collection of Greek temples anywhere looms on a sea-gazing hillside outside Agrigento. Its centrepieces is the stunning Temple of Concordia, but six other temples stand in various states of earthquake-toppled elegance.
You can get startling photos of the temples backed by Agrigento’s apartment blocks, but at other angles it looks as if nothing has changed since ancient times: the temples are backed by a valley carpeted in scrub and olive trees.
In the fifth century BC, Agrigento had a population of 200,000 and was fabulously wealthy. If you only visit one museum in Sicily, make it the Regional Archaeological Museum here, where some of its wealth is displayed.
Statues, temple reliefs, vases, cult figures, wine bowls and beautifully sculpted stone sarcophagi put the life and detail into Sicily’s stripped-down Greek ruins.
The Temple of Apollo in Syracuse, the largest Greek city of its day.Credit: iStock
Another grand city of the ancient era, Syracuse in eastern Sicily, was the largest Greek city of its day. Modern Siracusa features concrete apartment blocks and smoke stacks, but the ancient city’s romantic ruins rise above lemon groves beyond. An amphitheatre hewn from the hillside holds 16,000 spectators and remains in use today.
Another amazing Greek theatre lies up the coast in Taormina, a fashionable hillside resort with a lovely medieval and baroque old town draped in bougainvillea, which provided a lush filming location for season two of Netflix series The White Lotus.
Here the almost intact Greek theatre provides spectators with a view along the coast towards Mt Etna, whose summit trails wisps of volcanic smoke. The ancient Greeks had a knack for superb architecture in superb landscape settings, and this is a prime example.
The amazing Greek theatre in Taormina offers views out to Mount Etna.Credit: iStock
For another, head to Segesta, whose ruins lie scattered across a windswept hillside of purple thistles and wild fennel in northwest Sicily. If you’re after atmospheric Greek ruins without the crowds, there are few better places.
The landscape falls away over hills and ravines to the distant sea. The once-powerful city protrudes only in great mounds of tumbled stones, above which fragile white butterflies prance. It’s a landscape to make you believe in spiteful Greek gods and beautiful nymphs.
A small but magnificent 4000-seat theatre and a solitary temple are the only remaining major structures. The temple is however one of the best-preserved Doric buildings anywhere. Its 36 honey-coloured limestone columns are exclamation marks to the city’s vanished text.
The temple stands lonely on a hillside, enfolded in natural beauty. You can only gape at the architectural perfection, and marvel at the artistic brilliance of the ancient people that built it.
Even better, you won’t have to confront the crush of Athens or Delphi to enjoy it. Pick the right day and you might even have Segesta all to yourself, disturbed only by the twitter of birds and the hot sigh of the wind.
THE DETAILS
More
Fly
Etihad flies to Abu Dhabi and Rome with onward domestic connections to Palermo or Catania in Sicily. See etihad.com
Tour
Collette has a 14-day “Sicily and Its Isles” tour that takes in Greek ruins in Agrigento and Taormina, as well as other island highlights. From $3699pp, see gocollette.com
The writer travelled at his own expense.
Sign up for the Traveller Deals newsletter
Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.