Temple of Olympian Zeus

Valley of the Temples

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The Temple of Olympian Zeus, in local calcarenite stone, is one of the few sacred buildings in Agrigento that is securely attributed to the divinity to which it was originally devoted.

This building is mentioned in ancient texts and it was the largest Doric temple in the western Greek world. Polybius (2nd century B.C.) refers to the temple in his historic text and says that it had not been completed.

A later account by Diodorus Siculus (1st century B.C.) describes the temple in detail.

This description is partly problematic, because it suggests that the temple was completed in 480 B.C., after the victorious battle over the Carthaginians in Himera.

Recent archaeological investigations have demonstrated that the plan of the temple is different from the plans of the Temple of Athena in Syracuse and of the temple in Himera, both of which were constructed after the peace treaty (480 B.C.).

It is, therefore, probable that the planning of the temple and its construction started earlier, possibly at the beginning of the tyranny of Theron (488-472 B.C.).

The monumental ruins visible today are what survives of the destruction produced in ancient and modern times, when the stone blocks from the temple were used as building material.

For example, in the 18th century the ruins of the temple were used as a stone quarry for the construction of the dock in Porto Empedocle (1749-63).

This great temple was erected upon an imposing rectangular platform on which a large base (crepidoma) with five steps was placed.

The last of these steps was double the height of the other steps, forming a kind of podium for the temple and rising it above the surrounding buildings.

Instead of having an open colonnade (peristasis), the temple had an external wall with Doric half-columns (pseudo-peristasis), seven on the front and back and fourteen along the sides.

On the internal side of the wall, there were rectangular pillars in correspondence to the columns.

The interior of the temple was divided into three rooms: the central room called cella was preceded by a porch (pronaos) and followed by a room at the rear (opisthodomos).

The rooms were delimited by walls with twelve alternating pillars.

Some decorative elements of the superior part of the temple (trabeation) are present amongst the ruins.

These decorations include fragments of the sculptured pediment at the front of the temple.

According to Diodorus Siculus half of this pediment was decorated by a Gigantomachy, while the other half portrayed the scene of the Fall of Troy.

Some of the most peculiar features of the temple are columns, about 8 metres high, which supported the entablature and which are shaped as colossal mythological figures called Atlases.

These figures have often been interpreted as portraying the defeated 'barbarian' Carthaginians.

About 50 metres from the eastern frontage of the temple are the ruins of a sacrificial altar with its monumental staircase to the level where the sacrifices took place.

Many excavations and studies have been undertaken, since the beginning of the 19th century, to reconstruct the original appearance of the temple.

The latest project has been funded by the European Union (POR Sicilia 2000-2006) and entrusted by the Park Authority to the German Archaeological Institute (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut) in Rome.