|
Agrigento district
guide
(Back to
Agrigento main information page)
Agrigento
is one of most beautiful site of Sicily and a UNESCO World
heritage site for be one of the greatest cities of the ancient
Mediterranean world.
Located on
a plateau overlooking Sicily's southern coast the city is almost
medieval at its heart. Its landscape is quite unique in Italy as
its tiny stepped streets and fine churches look down over the
archeological remains of the Valle dei Templi and beyond to the
sea.
At the
center of the city, the Romanesque Gothic Cathedral,
built during the fourteenth century, still displays some of its
medieval character.
The facade
is very
scenographic.
Built in year 1000, it was transformed more than once between
then and the 17th century.
The
interesting XV century bell tower has a double order of blind
single openings dating to Gothic-Catalan times, while the
balcony belongs to the Arab-Norman period. There is a statue of
the Virgin Mary (end XV century) in the right aisle, and a
Gothic San Gerlando chapel, housing the patron saint?s silver
reliquary (mid XVII century). A rare acoustic effect in the
presbytery is called "voice carrier", since the murmurs of
someone at the door of the cathedral can be heard in the apse.
The main
street is the Via Atenea, which start at the eastern edge
of the old town towards the city?s Palazzi and the Church of
Santa Maria dei Greci. The Church was built over a Greek
temple of the fifth century BC with the compressed columns
visible in the nave and an underground tunnel which reveals the
church's foundations. It incorporates a Doric temple
dating to 480-460 B.C. A little courtyard in front of the church
has bits of ancient columns; some of the vertical elements and
part of the capitals are conserved in the atrium; the portal
dates to the l3th century. The interior is divided into a
central nave and two aisles on pointed arches.
(Back to
Agrigento main information page) |
