Agrigento

Maybe I'd take today a bit easier and walk out of town towards the Valley of the Temples, find a place to sit and look at them and across to the sea before visiting them tomorrow.

But first to get my bearings. I arrived in the dark yesterday and liked the feel of Agrigento but I hadn't really seen it. Maybe walk up to the bus stop I'll be leaving from on Friday and find out where the ticket office is so there are no last-minute surprises. 

En route, the unexpected poetry, in Italian and English, hung up outside an elegant building, stopped me:

Valorizzare il Sommerso 
I come back from the past.
New hands take care
of me with the same 
'old' attention.
I have a function again
and I'll tell my story
to those who want to meet me.

Bizarre. Who? What? I checked what I thought I'd seen, and yes, it was a Carabinieri (military police) building. It's not great poetry but a good deal better than anything I've seen outside any kind of police station in the UK. The door was open, a man indicated to wait until he'd finished on the phone then he let me in. My Italian wasn't good enough to find out more but another officer heard me and came out to help. It's a very small exhibition of antiquities found in the sea, either smuggled, or discovered by others with the carabinieri divers called in to help, but they'd bothered with comprehensive explanations and translated them into good English. I have seen 10,000 Greek vases in museums, including some with barnacles, but have never read text like:
'The idea of the exhibition (whose objective is to keep alive, in a complex land like Sicily, the culture of legality*) comes from the collaboration started and consolidated over time with the Provincial Headquarters of the Carabinieri and intends to focus attention on the very important role played by the Corps and its Cultural Heritage Protection Unit, ... constantly working to control illegal activities to the detriment of the cultural and artistic heritage of our nation. For these reasons, the works that have been chosen to be exhibited are the result of investigations and then, of the seizures carried out by the Provincial Command of Agrigento.'

I have simply never reflected on art through the lens of the law, despite the recent British Museum thefts. A strong subtext in Sicily, obviously, is *the mafia, visible here by its absence (though I did go to an exhibition called 'No Mafia' in Palermo) but of course there are many other contexts in which law enforcement interacts with art.

I had a long conversation with three officers about seeing things from different points of view, mostly in bad Italian, helped by the officer with pretty good English. We also discussed language and when the officer who'd let me in asked how much I'd charge for an English lesson, I gave up trying to speak Italian and spoke in slow simple Latin-based English to help with basic words he could recognise.

Quite the most unusual encounter with any police I've ever had in Europe.

I found the bus stop; the ticket office was closed. I guess that's some information.

I didn't realise that my map route to the Valley of the Temples involved a great number of steps. Don't like, and by the time I got to the bottom I thought maybe I'd visit today so I don't have to do it all again tomorrow. The site closes at 8pm so there's plenty of time.

So, on I walked to the gate. Locked. People were walking on so I followed. I asked near the entrance to the museum. 'Oh yes, 100m on the right.' Nothing. My feet were weary. I walked on, passing inaccessible temples on both sides of the road and very aware that there'd be a lot more walking around the site if I managed to find a way in.

Finally I came to a gate. With - hurrah - a taxi service nearby. That'll be my way back up the hill. Also with a long queue for tickets. Ah no, a queue for the bag scanner first. A man two in front of me was asked to unpack his bag, which he did on the scanner, holding everyone else up, while the inspector hunted, eventually finding a set of spanners that he was told to take back to his car. 'But I don't have a car,' he said, his things still strewn across the scanner.

By the time I'd overtaken the stand-off, paid for my ticket and got in, I hated all human beings, with their bad advice and their useless maps and their spanner-sets and their stupid noisy languages. I took a deep breath, walked towards some trees and tried to enjoy the temples I could see in a quiet present, but very soon I was hating all human beings again and all their stupid noisy children and their stupid phone conversations and their stupid pouty selfies and their complete inability to know where they are in the space they occupy with others.

O
K
Today is a day to hate humans and enjoy temples. Revel in both, Arachne.

It was a long walk around the site but the temples, two almost complete (minus roofs, of course), and the rest with the odd column or three remaining, are stunning among the almond and olive trees. And peaceful, despite myself. At first I asked myself why so many, then realised that this used to be a settlement and it's a lower density than that of churches in many Italian towns.

I sat, I looked at the sea, I looked back up the hill at modern Agrigento, and I gazed at temples from several angles and discovered columns made of bricks not stone.

After I'd hauled myself up the steps to the final temple, there was an unexpected bonus: an exit nearby so I didn't have to walk back to where I'd come in. Also taxi drivers, charging 15-20€ for the 6-minute drive back up the hill to Agrigento.

Reader, I walked.


Extras
- Brick pillar
- Carabinieri exhibition