Agrigento

Agrigento is a historic Sicilian city set on a hill overlooking the sea, where the landscape shifts from the elevated urban centre to a nearby coast of bays, promontories, sandy shores and white cliffs. Its old town occupies the western summit of the hill, with narrow lanes and courtyards that preserve the imprint of Arab urban planning.

The city’s identity reaches back to ancient Akragas, founded in the 6th century BC by colonists from Gela and later remembered as one of the important centres of the Greek world in Sicily. Over time it passed through Roman, Arab, Norman and medieval phases, reflected in names such as Agrigentum, Kerkent and Girgenti before the modern name Agrigento restored the link with its Greco-Roman past.

Today, Agrigento feels layered rather than static: a city of evening strolls, steep streets and cultural memory, also tied to the writer Luigi Pirandello. Its distinctiveness lies in this close meeting of Greek origins, Arab-shaped urban fabric and a sea-facing Sicilian setting.