Classical Archaeology
Private UNESCO archaeology tours in Sicily with doctoral archaeologists: Valley of the Temples, Segesta, Villa Romana del Casale, Syracuse Teatro Antico.
Classical Archaeology
Sicily holds three of the most important classical archaeological sites in the Mediterranean, and they are spread from the south coast to the interior to the east. The Valley of the Temples at Agrigento is the largest Greek archaeological park outside Greece itself — 1,300 hectares, five temples including Concordia of 440 BC, inscribed by UNESCO in 1997. Segesta is the single hilltop Doric temple of the Elymians, never finished because the diplomatic gesture it represented failed in 430 BC. The Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina preserves 3,500 square metres of late-Roman mosaics, including the sixty-metre Great Hunt corridor. Syracuse rounds out the canon — the Teatro Antico at Neapolis is the largest classical theatre on the island, carved from the rock and still in use for an annual festival of Greek tragedy.