We had an excellent breakfast and were underway by 9:15.  We headed back up the coast to Catania where we took the road west toward Palermo.  It was very clear around Etna and we could see snow on the western slope above the cinder cone field.  As we headed into central Sicily on the limestone plateau, we passed through tremendous wheat fields on our way to the Piazza Amerina.

The Piazza Amerina is a large imperial Roman villa that was buried by a landslide in the late 1100’s after being destroyed by the Norman, William the Bad.  Spectacular mosaics are beautifully preserved.  It appears to have been built around 300 A.D. during the reigns of Diocletian and Maximian.  In spite of all of the beautiful art, our visit will most be remembered by photos of The Faulkner, Drew, and Will, posing with a group of giddy teenaged Italian girls with whom they had been flirting. 

The drive to Agrigento took about two hours.  I dozed for a while and then ate my sandwich from yesterday afternoon.  I felt alert for the rest of the afternoon.

We went directly to the four Greek temples for which the city is known.  Bob, Anne, and some students went shard hunting in a recently turned lawn.  They found material from early Greek, later Greek, Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, and modern occupation of the site.  Suzanne later found a piece of obsidian, which may suggest a Bronze Age presence. 

We first went to the Temple of Hera that was finished around 450 B.C.  All of the temples are cut from an orange-tinted, fossilferous limestone.  Hera’s temple is 6x13 columns of Doric style.  It was destroyed at the beginning of the Christian era but has been partly reconstructed.  Several hundred meters down the sacred way is the Concorde Temple.  It is one of the best-preserved temples in all of the Greek world.  This is because the Christians converted it to a church, most vestiges of which are now gone.  Farther down the Sacred Way the Temple of Heracles (~500 B.C.) sits in unreconstructed ruin.  Large clamshells can be seen in the fallen columns.  The view over the Mediterranean, about 1 km to the southwest, was magnificent. 

Finally, we came to the archaic Olympian Zeus temple, which is also in unreconstructed ruin (7 x 14 columns).  The only reconstruction is that of an Atlas-like figure, 38 of which once stood in the openings between the columns.  It was a marvelous afternoon. 

We drove down toward the sea to the Akrabello Hotel which provided us all with large balconied rooms.  Elise, Laura, Drew, The Faulkner, and I went to the pizzaria across the street where we were soon joined by Francesco, Nino, and Rick.  I had grilled calamari and a 4-cheese pizza.  It was excellent.

We went back to the hotel lobby where we talked with several Italian teachers who were backed by eight ~15-year old girls who were giddy with glee about talking to the American guys.  When that broke up we went upstairs to see what was going on.  Somehow the party ended up in my room.  The students were very well behaved and fairly quiet but even so, the hotel asked us to break it up at 1:30.  We obliged and after a brief quiet discussion of the day, everyone trundled off to bed.

                          Ecology   Environmental Studies    Mathematics