Selinunte

On the 13th we headed back to Selinunte.  I say back because we were here on our last extended trip to Sicily in 2010 with our daughter who flew in from San Francisco to spend a couple weeks with us in Sicily.  The above shot is taken from the SE corner of the Acropolis, the main city site.  This site has about 6 temple ruins.  One has been somewhat reconstructed, Temple C.  That's what the columns at the upper left are.  Temple A's ruins are in the left foreground.  You can just make out the steps that led to the temple.  To the right are remains of other structures and the edge of the defensive wall that still remains.  

Map of the site

The remains of the wall on the east side of the city

Acropolis temple area from the southeast corner

Temple area from the south side of the site

Temple C from the south side of Temple A

Marinella di Selinunte from the Acropolis.  Monte Kronio, above Sciacca, is the peak on the right 

The site is huge.  You can take an electric tram from the entrance to the Collina Orientale and the Acropolis for 6-12 Euros, depending on if you want to go to the Acropolis without having to walk the LONG kilometer.  I'd advise that during the summer.  At this time of the year you can drive your car to a parking lot just below the wall.  (See the P next to the Tempio D note).  It's a fairly short uphill walk from there to the Acropolis proper and access to the excavations.  We had gone to the the Gaggera, the western portion, 6 years ago.  There are some visible ruins over there and I have photos from then but they're on a drive at home with others from that trip.  This time we went to Temples E, F & G on foot and then went back to the car to drive out to the Acropolis.  The Casa Del Viaggiatore is an office area for park workers and some fairly simplistic toilets.  They do have real bathrooms for visitors but there are no attendants so conditions aren't the best.  They are functional enough.  

We both took off wandering around taking photos.  Cathy went clockwise and I headed the other way.  I made it all the way around to Isolato FF1 where we met up and headed back to the car on the west side.  The areas above Isolato FF1 to the north gate, Porta Nord, have had some excavations done along the main roadway.  To the west of there and north of the Porta are large areas that are covered with brush and trees that are so thick they are impenetrable. You can see a couple feet into the bushes and see parts of wall but not much else.  In the areas of Tempio A, B, D and O you are able to walk, more like clamber on the stones, and pick your way around.  The remains of houses or other structures south of Tempio C are open enough to move through them.  The layout of Grecian houses are all pretty similar.  Small rooms surrounding a central courtyard.  This layout is repeated in all the sites we've visited in Sicily and Italy.  The best place to see and walk through them is Paestum, just south of Salerno on the Italian coast.  I'd recommend you take a day or more to see the museum and excavations at Paestum if you're every in the Sorrento/Amalfi area.  The best preserved temples in Italy outside of Sicily are there.

Temple E is the only one reconstructed.  Unlike the temples at Agrigento and Paestum you can walk into and through E.

Eastern entry to Temple E with Cathy at the steps for scale.

Entering E from the east

Walking inside gives you a real sense of the size of these temples and the effort required to construct them

Western side of Temple E

The Acropolis from the western end of Temple E

Temple F from Temple E

Carthaginians, Romans, earthquakes and time have taken their toll.

This is the bottom side of a capital, top of the columns. 

Columns were assembled in pieces with square posts between the round stones.

Temple G was one of the largest in the Grecian world.  The Old Woman column is the only one still standing after all this time.

The stones are all jumbled and there aren't a lot of ways to get into the interior.

It was a bit of effort to climb into the temple to get this shot.  We're lucky we didn't twist an ankle doing it.

Bright green lizards are common throughout Sicily.  If you leave your doors open they can get into the house

Many people do not realize that Greek temples were highly decorated with multiple bright paints.  The temple descriptions at Selinunte have tried to show what they could have looked like based on some instances where the archeologists have found stones with chromatic elements still intact. I've placed some photos of the descriptions here.  There is one instance of the use of inlaid stones for decorative or religious reasons.  This is the predecessor of mosaics.  I've also added a description of how the stones were quarried and transported.  Maybe we can make it to the Cave while we're here to see the partially completed column stones.  On the way back we can always stop in Menfi at the Cantine Settesoli, the wine store at Mandarossa, for some replacements.  You can't beat the prices.   At the Planeta wine shop outside of Sambucca you can get a bottle of their Santa Cecilia Nero D'Avola for about 20 Euro.  It cost us $40 a bottle on special order from Esquin and you'll pay $75-$85 in Seattle restaurants, $100 in Vegas.  At the Italia Restaurant they sell it for 28 Euros, the highest priced wine on the list.  Our waitress was astonished at the prices we pay back home.  I'll be the next update to their wine list will involve an increase.  

Inlay design from Tempio O area.  Romana Villa Casale is the culmination of this kind of artistic endeavor.

The Santuario is to the north of Temple D.

Santuario remains

A typical house or business site.  2 or 3 small rooms off of an entrance from the street.

The Cave, or quarry, for the site can be found about 4 km away.  This depicts how the stones were quarried and transported. 

The temples were constructed in the 6th & 5th centuries BC The city was destroyed more than once.  The Carthaginians, originally the Phoenicians, destroyed the city in 409 BC.   The Isolato FF1 apparently was built after that as a more defendable position but it was destroyed around 300 BC by the Romans during the First Punic War as they fought Carthage for Sicily.  There were stone catapult balls and other projectile weapons found during excavations that indicated Roman assaults.  Naturally none of them are exhibited in the area.  You have to go to Palermo to see them.  This is like Pompeii and Herculaneum.  The guides there are always telling you that relics, like the ash figures of the deceased and amphorae are reproductions, "the originals are in the museum in Naples".  This has become our common remark when we go to the ancient sites now.  The locals who work the sites understand the irony and do find it humorous.

The North Gate from the temple area

Viewing south from the Isolato FF1

The square projections on the lower stones are how they were handled to move them into position. The projections are removed from layers above the bottom

This is a Greek road.  The rocks used are natural and irregular.  Roman roads use smaller, shaped rocks very similar to cobblestones.  

Road to the north in the Isolato

Temples O, A & C from the southwest corner of the Acropolis.

The weather has changed.  It was raining most of today and is forecast to continue for the next 5 to 7 days.  It doesn't rain much but after that storm 2 weeks ago the ground is saturated and small landslides occur constantly.  There were 2 more on the SP115 that we saw as we drove to the Verdura Resort about noon.  When we were in Caltabellotta we had to backtrack on one-way street to leave the town because the designated highway through the city was blocked by some houses that had collapsed onto the road.  Pascale said her friend in Caltabellotta told her that several families had to abandon their homes because of landslides from the rainfall.  

The problem with the rain is that the mud that had dried on the back highways is now re-dampened and the roads, especially the mountain ones have become treacherous, not to mention having to pay double to get the car cleaned.  Looks like we'll be doing a lot of reading for the next few days while our laundry dries in the damp air.  This is a really wet winter for Sicily.  Damp and cold, with temps in the low 50's to low 60's.   At least it's better than Seattle right now and when the sun comes out it gets to almost 70!  I'll take that.

Ciao for now.