One of Phyllis’ professed reasons for coming to Sicily was to see the best Greek ruins not located within the ruined economy that is Greece, and so today starts to satisfy that desire.  Craig is not quite as focused on ruins but cheerfully humors her and navigates us first to Segesta, one of the most heavily advertised sites in Sicily.  It’s actually pretty small, containing one virtually intact (by ancient ruin standards) Doric Greek temple from about 430 B.C. and also a Roman amphitheater on another hilltop within the site.  Like most desirable Sicilian locations, this site was occupied by a revolving door of civilizations, and the uppermost castle is from Norman times (thirteenth century A.D.) while some of the surrounding hillside shows earlier Arabic influence.  They all build on top of the prior structures (to the extent they don’t simply raze it and rebuild using the same materials).  Presents a challenge for archaeologists to interpret it all.  All of Sicily has labored under a succession of invaders and we are seeing this juxtaposition of cultures and structures everywhere.  Currently, a couple of these old stone huts are used by shepherds tending the local flock, which is kept here to control the vegetation, a pretty clever approach.

We leave Segesta for Selinunte, a much larger but less developed site on the coast to the southwest.  The weather is still gray and threatening, and this tends to keep the other tourists to a minimum.  Both Segesta and Selinunte seem to be popular destinations for tour groups but we have so far managed to avoid the few who wander about.  This is especially so at Selinunte, where the weather threat is fulfilled when it starts raining about halfway through our site visit.  The busload of students who are following us give up and we again have an entire site to ourselves.

Selinunte is more haunting than Segesta, in part because there are collapsed ruins over a huge area, about 270 acres.  It was one of the largest Greek cities in its heyday, with over 100,000 residents, before it was destroyed by Hannibal and most of its inhabitants massacred in 409 B.C.  It is in an earthquake-prone area, so despite some reconstruction by successive occupants, it was given up for good after a big earthquake in the Middle Ages.  As a result, the entire area, at least the parts cleared of brush and excavated, are a jumble of fallen columns and collapsed stone structures.  The acropolis (main temple area) and a second peripheral temple area are the only cleared areas, with limited restoration.  You look from them out over a sea of brush where the city of 100,000 inhabitants actually lived.  It’s an eerie sensation, especially standing there in the rain, to think about all the beauty and then the destruction that occurred here.  Craig thinks it is also a wet sensation and so we keep moving around the site.

Though limited, the reconstructed temples are impressive.  On the acropolis, one temple (Temple C, thought to be dedicated to Apollo) dominates the landscape, though it now consists of just one wall of columns.  On the second temple site, another temple (Temple E) has been more thoroughly reconstructed.  The metopes and friezes from many of these ruins have been taken to the Archaeological Museum in Palermo, which is unfortunately closed until April.  At least they are in country, as opposed to somewhere like the British Museum.

The rain abates as we finish wandering about the acropolis, and we head to Marsala for another unplanned drive around another old medieval town center looking for our hotel.  The hotel turns out to be another delightful place, a restored 12^th century monastery.  There is an even more helpful front desk clerk who first helps us find a parking place (a real bear in these constricted old town centers) and then recommends another great restaurant (curiously named “Il Gallo e L’Innamorata”, “The Rooster and the Lover”…  there must be a story there – other than Craig’s uninformed speculation -- and we have to Google it sometime).  It pours rain but we venture out on the main corso (pedestrians only at night) with sturdy umbrellas loaned by the hotel.  We indulge in a full seafood antipasti course with about six separate dishes and then one main course rather than the two that are found on all Italian menus, and still return to the hotel stuffed.  The food was excellent as was the after dinner Marsala wine.