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Temple oh Hera in Selinunte,Sicily (Italy)

Selinunte is an abandoned ancient Greek city, with ruins of an acropolis and numerous temples. The city was founded in the seventh century BC, and effectively destroyed in 409 BC. Selinunte's glorious heyday lasted for a period of about two centuries, when it was one of the most progressive Greek cities in Sicily, famous throughout Magna Graecia.

Selinunte is located in the southwest coast of Sicily in the province of Trapani, close to the border with Agrigento province. While Agrigento boasts more standing Greek temples in its renowned "Valley of the Temples," Selinunte is set in a much more tranquil and scenic setting, with an ambience that permits a good impression of what an ancient Greek city and life in it were really like.

The city of Selinunte proper, known as the "Acropolis," is situated on high land overlooking the Mediterranean Sea about twenty meters below. The Acropolis is located roughly in the center of the park's area.

Selinunte was founded by Doric Greek colonists from the Sicilian Greek settlement of Megara Hyblea, the latter also settled near Syracuse by Greeks circa 730 BC and located roughly 15 miles North of present-day Syracuse on Sicily's east coast. The precise date of Selinunte's founding is debated, as the accounts of the ancient historians Thucydides and Diodorus Siculus differ on this point, but it was between 650 and 630 BC. There is also some uncertainty as to the origin of the city's name. Some scholars maintain that the name came from the nearby River Selinus, while others claim the name was derived from the Greek word for wild celery, selinon, which apparently was abundant in the area at the time of the city's establishment.

Embroiled in border wars with the Elami based in Segesta and Entella the Selinuntians hurriedly built harbor facilities. However, an treaty of sorts was eventually reached over their common border and the skirmishing ceased around 580 BC. A period of relative peace lasting a century followed.

Commerce allowed the residents to upgrade Selinunte and build the splendid temples. Selinunte's trade, riches and elegant buildings soon made it famous as one of the most important cities of Greek Sicily and even all of Magna Graecia, second in importance only to Syracuse. However, Selinunte's success soon engendered the envy of the neighboring Carthaginians, who perceived the city as a threat to their hold on Sicily. This would eventually lead to the city's demise.

Selinunte's citizens remained neutral in the war of 480 BC, not siding with their fellow Greeks when Agrigento and Syracuse decisively defeated the Carthaginians at Himera. This neutrality on the part of Selinunte did not earn the city many Greek friends. Though the policy was designed to appease the nearby Carthaginians, it did not gain Selinunte any friends in that quarter either.

By 409 BC, the political situation had changed. In the intervening years, Selinunte's diplomats had managed to establish an alliance with Syracuse and Agrigento. This ensured Selinunte seven decades of peace and prosperity, during which some of the more beautiful and advanced temples were built. The Carthaginians were kept at bay. However, the Carthaginians had a thirst for vengeance against the Sicilian Greeks, and were biding their time, waiting for an opportune moment to strike.

In 409 BC Selinunte became involved in a war between Syracuse and Athens, when the Greek metropolis sent an expedition to punish the Sicilian cities that sided against her on behalf of Syracuse. The Athenians were never able to capture Syracuse, and were eventually forced to leave Sicily, having incurred heavy losses. Selinunte's diplomacy had once again managed to avoid any great degree of involvement in the war on the part of the city. Most of the Sicilian Greek cities, however, were worse off, with their armies weak and disorganized. Among these were Agrigento and Syracuse, Selinunte's allies. This opened an opportunity for the Carthaginians.

The Carthaginians used some minor border skirmishes between Selinunte and the Elami as an excuse to march upon Selinunte to aid their old allies. They sent an army said to number 100,000 men, large for those days, equipped with battering rams and siege towers that were taller than Selinunte's walls. Selinunte appealed to Agrigento for aid, but that proved to be in vain.

After a siege that only lasted nine days, the Carthaginians breached the walls of Selinunte and easily overwhelmed the defenders. What followed was an orgy of destruction, torture, rape, murder and looting that was considered abhorrent even by the standards of those days. According to Diodorus Siculus, about 16,000 of Selinunte's estimated 25,000 or so civilians were butchered outright and 7,000 were enslaved. Only a scant two thousand Selinuntians managed to escape the bloodbath and make their way to Agrigento. This brutal massacre marked the end of Selinunte's glory and freedom, and although the city was repopulated to some extent by the Carthiginians, who practiced human sacrifice, the city never regained its former beauty, power or prestige. During the first Punic War with Rome in 250 BC, the Carthaginian forces, fleeing the Roman advance towards the main center of Panormus (Palermo), decided to deprive the Romans of a prize by razing Selinunte to the ground, destroying it forever.

The site of the city remained a ruin for centuries, through the Roman period and into the early medieval era. Around 700 AD, a small Byzantine Greek village grew up around the ancient ruins. However, a serious earthquake destroyed that village and further damaged what was left of Selinunte in the early 9th century, just prior to the arrival of the Saracens in Sicily.

Seluninte boasts numerous temples, identified by letter. Some of the famed "metopes," stone-carved panels depicting various scenes from Greek mythology, currently on display in Palermo's Archeological Museum, came from Temple E.

Temple F is located right next to Temple E, built circa 550 BC. This temple may have been dedicated to the bacchanalian deity, Dionysius. It may have also contained the Temple Treasury, since there are signs that the spaces between the columns were walled in.

Temple G, the last and largest of the trio, was larger. It is believed to have been built around 530 BC, but was never finished, not even by 409 BC when the Carthaginians sacked Selinunte. This behemoth of a temple was the fourth largest Greek temple ever built, not only in Sicily out in all of the entire Greek world. Temple G is believed to have been dedicated to Apollo, God of the Sun. Unfortunately, only one large column is still standing. The rest of Temple G is a great pile of huge stones that seem to have been knocked down by a giant.

The acropolis is the actual city of Selinunte and is located west of the "Eastern Temples," built on high ground looking out over the sea. It was once flanked by two small rivers, one on each side of the city. The walls surrounding the Acropolis were mostly reconstructed by archaeologists in 1927, though some parts of the walls standing are actually from antiquity. Ancient sources gave the city a population of circa 25,000, and the size of the Acropolis supports that figure.

The entire Acropolis has never been completely excavated. However, the temples and the market (agora) zone, clustered between the sea and just beyond the intersection of the two main streets, has been thoroughly excavated.

There are five temples in the Acropolis, though only one of the five, Temple C, is in discernible condition. The other four temples, A, B, D and O, are essentially jumbled piles of stones strewn about.