Agrigento is the name of a town on the southern coast of Sicily, Italy, capital of the province of Agrigento. It is located at on a hill overlooking the sea. The city is renowned as the site of the ancient Greek city of Akragras, one of the leading cities of Magna Graecia.

Attractions

Ancient Akragas covers a huge area – much of which is still unexcavated today – but is exemplified by the famous "Valley of the Temples" (actually a misnomer, as it is a ridge, rather than a valley). This comprises a large sacred area on the south side of the ancient city where seven monumental Greek temples in the Doric style were constructed during the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Now excavated and partially restored, they constitute some of the largest and best preserved ancient Greek buildings outside of Greece itself. They are listed as a World Heritage Site.
The best preserved of the temples are two very similar buildings traditionally attributed to the goddesses Juno Lacinia and Concordia (though archaeologists believe this attribution to be incorrect). The latter temple is remarkably intact, due to its having been converted into a Christian church in 597 CE. Both were constructed to a peripteral hexastyle design. The area around the Temple of Concordia was later re-used by early Christians as a catacomb, with tombs hewn out of the rocky cliffs and outcrops.
The other temples are much more fragmentary, having been toppled by earthquakes long ago and quarried for their stones. The largest by far is the Temple of Olympian Zeus, built to commemorate the Battle of Himera (480 BC) and believed to have been the largest Doric temple ever built. Temples dedicated to Hephaestus, Hercules and Asclepius were also constructed in the sacred area, which includes a sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone (formerly known as the Temple of Castor and Pollux); the marks of the fires set by the Carthaginians in 406 BCE can still be seen on the sanctuary's stones.
Many other Hellenistic and Roman sites can be found in and around the town. These include a pre-Hellenic cave sanctuary near a Temple of Demeter, underlying the Church of San Biagio. A late Hellenic funerary monument erroneously labelled the "Tomb of Theron" is situated just outside the sacred area, and a 1st century CE heroon (heroic shrine) adjoins the 13th-century Church of San Nicola a short distance to the north. A sizeable area of the Greco-Roman town has also been excavated and several classical necropolises and quarries are still extant.