Sicily-Valley of the Temples & Marsala

Valley of the Temples

Pascal Lamb

March 30, 2014

A City Going Down Hill

We said good-bye to Giuliana after breakfast this morning. She's actually an attorney & prefers getting to know people from different places rather than practicing law.

Our guide for the morning, Marco, met us at the B&B. He graciously brought us a pastry Easter lamb like the ones we photographed yesterday saying, "I know you want to see Jewish sites, so I brought you this." Maybe he thought it was a Pascal lamb. We thanked him profusely & slaughtered it after dinner. It looked nicer than it tasted.

Marco is an archaeologist who moonlights teaching grades 1-6 & being a tour guide between digs. He must have been briefed that we wanted to see Jewish sites so took us up the steps outside our B&B. Right at the top was the defunct San Dominican convent built at the edge of the Jewish quarter during the Inquisition. It served as a barrier & guardian supervising Jewish lives & assuring the "conversos" would be faithful. There are no markings or artifacts proving the area was indeed Jewish, but the assumption is drawn from the fact that it contains the oldest houses in Agrigento.

On the contemporary side, there are no Jews in town anymore. Marco proudly mentioned that Italians never let Nazis build concentration camps in Italy. Now, there is an influx of North Africans who, so far, are finding work in agriculture. This is a depressed area. The sulfur industry was lost to other countries & mines closed. Property values in the old city have plummeted. Marco bought a house for $E17,000, but it will take $E100,000 to fix it up. There are abandoned buildings everywhere & not even a whisper of the bustling metropolis it used to be.

He attributed a lot of the strife to "the Godfather." He only used the word "mafia" once. The Godfather & politicians are hand in glove. It is the normal way of doing business here. Judges & politicians who have tried to fight them have been murdered. 

In The Valley

We squeezed into his Fiat & rode down past olive & almond groves to the Valley of the Temples. The site isn't in a valley, but on the crest of a long hill. The Temples, though, made a dramatic appearance as we rounded a bend. They are a grouping of some of the best-preserved Greek Temples we've seen. Greeks arrived here in 580 BC & were into showing off their architecture, They made sure this complex was visible from the sea as a reminder to possible intruders of their greatness & that they had "gods on their side." The general public wasn't permitted into the Temples since Temples doubled as banks where coins, weapons, & valuable gifts were stored. Not until the Byzantines did the inhabitants of the "valley" feel threatened. When Muslims showed interest, the town was moved up the hills to the high point & better defensive position where the old city rests today.

Recycling was big with our predecessors. It seemed a shame to let those huge abandoned stones go to waste when the next civilization could use them for their own buildings. Temples became churches, Greek pediments probably showed up as someone's fireplace mantle for all I know. Everything was fair game. It was their version of pre-fab. Why chisel new when you could grab an already quarried & cut wall of stone?

Marco hopped on & off the paths eager to show us the minutest details. He found part of an old bronze coin for us, & part of a tiny bronze cup for Judi. He eagerly pointed out the arched Roman Christian burial tombs & explained that the arch was symbolic of the rising & setting sun; the beginning & end of life. He marveled at how clever the ancients were in building a Temple to the god of healing, Asclepius, outside the walls to protect the citizens from exposure to disease. That Temple was used as a hospital & clearing house for those wanting to enter the walls of the city. It was a sort of Ellis Island. He gloried in the fact that the Allied invasion & bombs were from directions that kept the Temples safely off their trajectory.

The Depths

Marco was very solicitous & offered to lead us out of town & put us on the road to our next destination, Marsala. We drove through increasingly unattractive landscape, vacant & depressed industrial parks, all the time trying to put the address of our hotel into the Garmin. I got the feeling she didn't like being called Our Lady of the GPS, this being a Sunday, & she was balking. There was nothing we could do & no combination of wording for the name of the street we were searching for that would let her recognize it. We even had her search for a street from Google Maps where we had to turn near our hotel. She refused to co-operate.  She froze. She was on, she was taking no more prompts, & we couldn't turn her off. We unplugged her to no avail. 

We drove along on faith looking for a place to eat, then, more importantly, a toilet. It was Sunday & it was as if we were driving through ghost towns. We found Marsala, but still had not a clue where our hotel was. We called them & gave them the intersection of our location in town. What I understood clearly was that we were very far from where we should be. What I didn't understand were the detailed directions given by the woman at the hotel telling me what highways to use & what streets to look for. Then she told me to turn by Clinica Molana, wherever that was. Again, this being Italy, street by street maps are rare & street markings rarer. Highways may or may not display their assigned numbers.

We asked help from one man wandering by who turned out to be in a dimension other than ours. The other lone person was a woman who made some sense. She pointed to the ocean, said the name of a town & road number, & we headed that way. When we lost signs to that town, we stopped two women getting into a car in a residential neighborhood. One was old & one was elderly. I rolled down the car window & asked for the Clinic thinking it was a landmark. They did recognize the name but perked up when I mentioned Contrada Dara. Then began their debate on the best way to approach our situation. In rapid fire Italian, they gestured, disagreed, & looked to us for confirmation & understanding. At one point, one woman leaned into the car so that her head was in my face. This lasted well over five minutes.

Somewhere in the mix, I realized they'd indicated which was their car & mentioned something about eating. Were they going to take us home with them? If they did, would they let us use their toilet? Would they feed us? Would they adopt us? Would they ever stop arguing? I could feel mild vibrations from the back seat where I knew Judi was doing all in her power to keep from breaking into laughter. David & I couldn't look at each other for fear of exploding into guffaws ourselves. These women were trying to be helpful. They wanted the best for us.   But they wouldn't be quiet & let us go. At last, everyone thanked everyone else. They got into their little brown car, we pulled away, & we were instantly confused at the next intersection. But there they were. Their little brown car pulled around us, they beckoned, & we followed. They led us to where we should have a straight shot to our hotel & they were gone. But how far did we have to go? Were we looking for a large or small clinic? Why was our hotel, the Baglio Oneto Resort, keeping itself a secret? What the heck was a "baglio" anyway? Did we care?

We discussed how far to go before asking for directions again, but there was no one on the street. Had we passed it? NO!! There was a slim brown sign hidden in a forest of signs with Baglio Oneto printed on it. The arrow pointed ahead. How far? Who cared? Someone else knew about it. It wasn't a myth. And then, just as Shangri-La emerged from the mist, the Casa Cura de Molana sign peeked out from behind a tree. It was our landmark clinic.

We turned up a narrow road leading to a gated entrance to our resort. It's a lovely place surrounded by its own vineyard. There aren't many people here. Who could find it? The man at the desk tried putting the hotel address into the GPS but had to resort to entering only map coordinates. Maybe we'll find our way back if we ever leave the property.

We ate a bite for lunch then David took a walk in the vineyards & became surrounded by goats. The shepherd started a conversation & wanted to speak French. He pointed out a ruin but communication was limited. David then went on a foray to a discount store & scored cheap water & bananas. He loved their American style parking lot. He was also proud to find his way back.

We had an escort to dinner. Nothing was open in town so we had to eat at the hotel. The owner gave us a tour telling us that his wife's family name was Oneto. They were from Genoa & had come to Sicily 1,002 years ago. They settled in Palermo then moved to Marsala & started a vineyard. Some of the ornate tile floors we were walking on were from the 1700's or 17th century. I forget which.

The "resort" is trying hard to be elegant. Food is served under silver domes, but guests were wearing jeans & walking shoes. The food was excellent. Judi had veal Marsala (appropriate), David had steak, & I had pasta. The ambience & attempt at class ended when our server cleared our plates & scraped one onto the other at tableside. At least tonight's dinner menu didn't have "guts of lamb & stuffed grilled stomach parmesan" like the one yesterday.

Tomorrow we'll try to find Erice & Trapani, then return to this hotel. All will be well if Our Lady doesn't give us the deep freeze again.

Toby