The garden of Kolymbethra is an archaeological site of great natural and landscape importance set in a small valley in the heart of the valley of the Temples in Agrigento amidst citrus groves and centuries-old olive trees. This little valley is a significant part of Akragas, a city founded by the Greeks in the 6th century B.C.E. Its name derives from the large basin (called Kolymbethra: “of the perimeter of seven stadui”) where water would flow into a network of galleries designed by Theron in 480 B.C.E. to supply the city. It was quickly adapted for use as a fish breeding pond and attracted swans and birds, transforming the arid Sicilian territory into a flourishing garden filled with Mediterranean plants.
In the centuries that followed, it became property of the Church which introduced the citrus trees, and reached its greatest splendour between the 19th and 20th centuries when it became a must-see destination on the Grand Tour. In the last decades of the 1900s, the Kolymbethra was abandoned until it was entrusted to FAI by the Regione Autonoma della Sicilia in 1999 and its original beauty restored.
FAI - Fondo Ambiente Italiano
Via Carlo Foldi 2 - 20135 Milano
Phone: +39 02 46 76 15 393
Email: m.pizzorni@fondoambiente.it
