Segesta

Segesta, about an hour from Palermo, is the site of an ancient temple and theater built in an area with roots back to the 12th Century BC. The temple dates from the 5th Century BC when Segesta had a prosperous alliance with Athens.
The temple was never completed, yet today it remains one of the few intact temples standing from when the Greeks had influence on the island of Sicily.


The landscape today is pretty much what Goethe described in 1787.
“The location of the temple is singular: it stands at the top of a long, wide valley, on a hill that is isolated but surrounded by rocks…It is a fertile but sad region: it is all cultivated, but you cannot see one single house in it. “
The theater was built in the second half of the 2nd Century BC when Segesta was a free town under the Romans.