Agrigento

Akragas was founded around 582–580 BC by Greek colonists from Gela, joined by settlers from Crete and Rhodes, on a plateau above the sea between the rivers Hypsas and Acragas. It was the last of the major Greek colonies in Sicily. Its early ruler Phalaris was remembered as the archetypal tyrant, said to have roasted his enemies inside a bronze bull. Under Theron, who seized power around 488 BC, the city helped defeat Carthage at the Battle of Himera in 480 BC and began the great building works of the Valley of the Temples, including the vast Temple of Olympian Zeus. Its wealth became proverbial: Plato is said to have remarked that its people built as if they would live for ever yet feasted as if there were no tomorrow.

Carthage sacked Akragas in 406 BC. The city revived, was fought over in the Punic Wars, and in 210 BC was captured by Rome and renamed Agrigentum; it prospered again on its port, sulphur and farming. After Rome fell, its people abandoned the lower city for the hilltop. Arabs took it in 828, the Normans renamed it Girgenti, and Count Roger I founded a Latin bishopric in 1087.

Girgenti declined through the Middle Ages and revived after the 18th century. Sulphur and potash were mined locally until the 1970s and shipped from Porto Empedocle. In 1927 the Fascist government imposed the Italianised name Agrigento, still controversial, and the city was heavily bombed in the Second World War. A landslide in 1966 destroyed the Addolorata quarter. The temples became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, the old centre took back the name Girgenti in 2016, and Agrigento was Italy's Capital of Culture in 2025.

Agrigento's identity is bound up with its two most famous sons. The philosopher Empedocles was a citizen of ancient Akragas, and the harbour town of Porto Empedocle is named after him. Luigi Pirandello, the playwright who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934, was born in 1867 at Caos, in the countryside west of the city, and his birthplace is now a museum. It was the suggestion of the writer Andrea Camilleri, of Agrigentine origin, that led to the old town being renamed Girgenti in 2016.

The great event of the year is the Almond Blossom Festival, held as the almond trees flower at the turn of February and March. Folk groups come from many places; the festival opens with a sunset visit to the temples and the lighting of a torch of friendship before the Temple of Concordia, and closes with a parade of painted Sicilian carts and bands from the town down to the valley, while prizes go to the best-decorated balcony on Via Atenea. At Christmas the Villaseta district shows more than a hundred hand-made nativity scenes.

Daily social life centres on Via Atenea, called the city's drawing room, where the evening passeggiata brings families out to stroll and stop for coffee or an aperitivo. Sport means football with ASD Akragas, which takes the ancient name, and professional basketball with Fortitudo Agrigento.

About 55,000 people lived in Agrigento in 2025, making it the largest town in its province and the tenth largest in Sicily. Around 7 per cent were born abroad, the largest groups coming from Morocco, Senegal, Romania, Germany and Tunisia.

The economy rests on tourism, drawn by the archaeological sites, and on farming in the surrounding countryside. Unemployment is high — almost twice the national average in 2010. The mining that once sustained the area ended in the 1970s.

Because the archaeological park fills the ground between the hilltop and the sea, much of the population lives in outlying districts or along the coast. Villaseta grew in the 19th century around silk mills between the city and the port; Monserrato was built after the 1966 landslide to house families from the old Rabato quarter; and to the south San Leone, Villaggio Mosè and Cannatello have merged into a long coastal suburb that fills with holidaymakers in summer. In 2019 the district of Favara Ovest passed to neighbouring Favara after a referendum. Public transport changed hands in August 2026, when a new operator, TAG – Trasporti Agrigento, took over the city buses. Life slows at midday, especially in the heat of summer, and the streets fill again in the evening.

Agrigento eats in the Sicilian way, and its cooking reflects the island's layers of history. The Greek colonists left a preference for fish, wheat, olives, grapes, almonds, pistachios and fresh vegetables, and dishes based on aubergine and olive oil are a feature of the local table. The Arabs brought sugar, citrus, rice and spices such as saffron and cinnamon, which shaped Sicily's sweets.

Almonds are the local emblem. The hills inland are planted with almond groves and vineyards, the trees' flowering is celebrated every year with the town's biggest festival, and the nuns of the Cistercian convent of Santo Spirito still make traditional almond pastries. Across Sicily, almonds go into marzipan fruits, frutta martorana, said to have been invented at the convent of the Martorana in the 14th century.

Island specialities are found everywhere in the town: arancini, deep-fried balls of rice stuffed most often with a meat ragù or with ham and cheese; caponata, a sweet-and-sour aubergine starter; and desserts such as cannoli and cassata. In summer, granita is the drink of choice in the cafés of Via Atenea, and in the early evening the aperitivo — a spritz, a glass of local wine or a Sicilian craft beer with small snacks — fills the terraces along Via Atenea and Viale della Vittoria. In summer the evenings move down to the bars of San Leone.