The Valley of the Temples

Getting there

The Valley has two ends, and the route is a line: whoever leaves the motorhome at one end has to come back to it. The easiest way is to go up to the Temple of Juno by bus and walk down.

• The motorhome is left at Porta V, the lower end, on via Caduti di Marzabotto: it is the Valley car park where motorhomes are allowed. It is paid, and you cannot sleep here at night
• The Temple Tour Bus stops at Porta V and at the Temple of Juno with its line B: 5 euros for the day ticket, free for children between 4 and 12, 12.50 euros for a family. It does not run on Mondays, and the operator writes that it does not run in the coldest months either
• The TUA buses leave from the centre, from Piazzale Rosselli and from the station: line 2/ goes up to the Temple of Juno and line 1 passes Porta V, so you go up with one and come back with the other, with the 1.20 euro ticket
• Without a bus you walk up from Porta V to the Temple of Juno along the Via Sacra, and come back down the same way

Practical information

Contacts

Where it is

Agrigento · Sicilia

You set off from

Notes

• Opening hours and prices taken from the official sources on 28 October 2026: the Valley is open every day of the year, Mondays included, and the ticket office gives 8:30 to 20:00 with last entry at 19:00, with no separate winter timetable. From November to March the ticket office of the Teatro Ellenistico, opposite the museum, is closed: you enter from the Temple of Juno or from Porta V
• The ticket: full price 14 euros, reduced 7 for European citizens between 18 and 25 and for FAI members; free for anyone under eighteen, accompanied by an adult if under twelve. Free entry for everyone on the first Sunday of the month
• The combined ticket with the Kolymbethra costs 20 euros full price, 12 reduced, and 2 euros for young people between 6 and 17. In November and December the garden is open 10:00-16:00 with last entry at 15:30, and the combined ticket online must be bought by 13:15. You can enter the Kolymbethra only after entering the Valley, and the recommended entrance is Porta V
• Sunset: from November to January the sun goes down between ten to five and ten past five, so you see it from inside the Valley. The Concordia and the Temple of Juno each have a front facing west, and at sunset they catch the low light
• Almost every name is wrong, and the park says so for each one. The Concordia is so called because of a Roman inscription to the "concord of the people of Agrigento" that in the sixteenth century Tommaso Fazello linked to the temple by mistake; Juno comes from a passage of Pliny that spoke of a temple at Crotone; the Dioscuri from a line of Pindar, and the temple more probably belonged to Demeter and Persephone. The four famous columns of the Dioscuri are a nineteenth century reconstruction, made with pieces from different periods
• The Temple of Hercules is the oldest, from the end of the sixth century BC, and the eight columns standing on the south side were raised again between 1922 and 1924 by Sir Alexander Hardcastle, the English captain who lived at Villa Aurea and paid for the excavations out of his own pocket until the Wall Street crash of 1929 ruined him
• The Telamone: between the half columns of the Temple of Zeus stood stone giants eight metres tall that held up the entablature. One has been put back together with the original blocks, set upright on a steel frame and inaugurated on 29 February 2024. Another, reassembled earlier and 7.65 metres tall, is at the Museo archeologico Pietro Griffo
• The Griffo museum is outside the Valley, on the other side of the road, in contrada San Nicola: every day, Mondays included, 9:00-19:30, last entry at 19:00, 10 euros, reduced 5, free under 18. Besides the Telamone there are the Ephebe of Agrigento, from around 480 BC, and the great painted kraters. The combined ticket with the Valley costs 19.20 euros according to the Valley's page and 20.20 according to the museum's; for a family there is the Card Family of the Valley and the museum, 33.60 euros for two adults and their children under twenty-six, valid for one year
• The Fallen Icarus by Igor Mitoraj, the bronze lying in front of the Concordia, was supposed to be moved in 2023, and it has stayed
• The Kolymbethra was the pool that Theron had dug after the victory of Himera, in 480 BC: Diodorus describes it as full of fish and swans. Once filled in, it became a vegetable garden, and with the citrus trees it took the name of "giardino", garden, as citrus groves are called in Sicily. The FAI has looked after it since 1999: lemons, mandarins and oranges of old varieties irrigated in the Arab way, and higher up Saracen olive trees, carob trees, almond trees and prickly pears. It is the only shady place in the whole visit
• Under the garden run the aqueducts of Phaeax, and with the Associazione Agrigento Sotterranea you go down for about forty minutes, in groups of six, with a supplement of 10 euros, reduced 7: closed shoes. Ask at the garden's ticket office whether the tour is running that day
• On the Via Sacra there is little shade: a hat and water are needed in autumn too

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