Overview
Agrigento is one of the most popular cities in Sicily. As a matter of fact, Agrigento is world-renowned for its Valle dei Templi, (Valley of the Temples). The Valle dei Templi is actually the most known and celebrated archaeological area of Agrigento. In here, stand the monuments remaining from the of the old town of Akragas founded in the sixth century BC by the colonists of Gela and it was transformed, in approximately 100 years, in "the most beautiful city of mortals" (Pindar). Later, Akragas (Agrigento) was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 406, refunded in 340 BC, and it had new glory. But suddenly, it was bound to its final decline with the arrival of the Byzantines. Therefore, the ancient town was abandoned in the ninth century after the Arab conquest, and it was reduced to a small area on a hill dominating Girgenti, from which, later on, Agrigento took its name. Passed to the Normans, the town was chosen as diocese and adorned with a lot of churches. So new buildings and monuments continued to born between the fourteenth and fifteenth century and even later between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1927 the town took the name of Agrigento and today has 56,000 inhabitants. 