Grand Tour

Following the emotional wave provoked by the first sensational discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum in the mid-eighteenth century, a growing number of travellers from Europe came to Italy to admire the vestiges of the past. Thanks to the sensitivity of the Bourbon kings, the cities buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD were brought back to the light, along with their beautiful paintings, images of a world that was believed to have disappeared forever. The Grand Tour, the journey to discover ancient Italian sites, was a real cultural movement, which developed alongside the emergence of neoclassicism in literature and art. Antiquity dictated tastes and became an inescapable model of beauty and harmony. The offspring of the noble European families used this trip to complete their education, sometimes dangerous and exhausting, which could last for years. Certainly an experience full of emotion, in the name of learning and knowledge on the one hand, and in the name of escapism and delight on the other. Sicily was one of the preferred destinations, drawing visitors with the irresistible charm of its ruins. Sicilian monumental heritage also offered the unique opportunity to encounter Greek civilisation without having to face a dangerous trip to Greece, then under Turkish rule. Many travellers filled notebooks with their experiences of contact with antiquity, and sometimes accompanied their impressions with illustrations. Art students, engravers and painters offer valuable evidence through their 'ancient visions' of Italian artistic sites.

On the Sicilian journey, a stop in Agrigento, at the time still called Girgenti, was a must, earning enthusiastic praise from visitors, who dedicated wonderful paintings to Agrigentine monuments. In particular, the Olympieion with its telamons aroused great curiosity among the travellers, impressed by the size of the ruins of one of the largest temples. Among the images dedicated to Akragas those illustrating the work by the Parisian abbot Richard de Saint Non (1785), and those of the Voyage pittoresque (1787) by Jean Pierre Louis Laurent Houel, painter to the King of France, are particularly striking. The ruined temples are depicted in a lush landscape, often populated by shepherds with their goats. The monuments of ancient Akragas are portrayed with clear and decisive strokes by the engraver Salvatore Ettore, who illustrated the volumes of the Theatine Giuseppe Maria Pancratii in 1751.

In his Italian Journey (1817), the German poet recounts his sentimental journey made between 1786 and 1788, and describes his intellectual rebirth in contact with history. He enthused about the valley in the spring dawn light: I've never seen in my entire life such a splendour of spring as this morning at sunrise... From the window we see the vast and gentle slope around the ancient city of gardens and vineyards; under the thick green a few traces of the great and populous districts of the long ago city can be glimpsed. Only at the southern end of this verdant and flowery slope rises the Temple of Concordia, in the east the few remains of the Temple of Juno; but from above the eye does not see the ruins of temples... instead it runs south towards the sea.