The Greek Pompeii? Selinunte is a lesser-known wonder on Sicily’s southwest coast

It doesn’t take much browsing through online travel forums to realise that the vast majority of tourists go to a tiny number of places ordained as “must sees”. In Sicily, the default itinerary is Cefalù, Taormina, and Ortigia. If you’re up for some Greek ruins you’ll throw in a day trip to Agrigento. In a search for a more authentic, less crowded Sicily, we avoided all of these spots.

When it came to the island’s Greek roots, we headed for Segesta and Selinunte and were richly rewarded.

Selinunte was one of our favourite experiences of the whole trip, and we both enjoyed it even more than Agrigento, which we explored thoroughly and loved on a visit a decade ago. (We actually drove right underneath the ridge of temples at Agrigento this time on our way to Piazza Armerina, but didn’t stop.)

There are three reasons Selinunte had such an impact: the vast scale of the place, its striking location, and the relative absence of tourists.

First, some context: With its strategic position right in the middle of the Mediterranean, Sicily was a prize colony from the moment the first gang with boats and swords came up with the idea of an overseas pied a terre. Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Greeks all sunk roots, creating colonial city states rather than taking over the whole island. Ortigia/Siracusa and Agrigento were such entities, Selinunte another, lying 58 miles west of Agrigento along the same coast. Greeks founded it in the 600s BC as their westernmost colony. The Carthaginians took it over in the 400s BC and it later became a battleground in the wars between Rome and Carthage. By 200 BC it was already a ruin.

While Agrigento remained a population centre with layers of successive building repurposing and layering over its Greek foundations, Selinunte mostly lapsed back into countryside. When people got interested in classical antiquity and started digging stuff up, they could easily unearth the enormous sprawl of the city beneath olive groves and pastures. Today’s site spreads over about two square miles with three distinct areas for exploration: The East Hill, with the most complete temple ruins (this is what you see in most photos of the place), the Acropolis (essentially the city centre, with housing and public buildings), and Gaggera Hill in the west, with another big temple complex. Unless you want to hike miles through arid, coastal scrubland, buy the ticket that includes shuttle services. Oversized golf carts will whisk you between the main areas while giving you some excellent views.

The entry building is the only place you’ll encounter a crowd; once people get their tickets and set off to explore the landscape everyone fans out. The first thing you’ll see on entering is the most-reconstructed of the temples on the East Hill, with the Acropolis to your left and the sea beyond it. It’s a stunning introductory view. 

Everyone naturally makes for the almost complete building, Temple E, first. It is in as good a shape at the temples at Agrigento but unlike the more famous site you can walk inside these. It’s a real thrill and puts the monumentality of these structures in a whole new light. Temples F and G next door are essentially just piles of rubble, but rubble you can touch, wander amongst and scramble over. Standing next to a column capital that’s wider across than you are tall gives you profound respect for ancient builders. The back temple, G, was the largest in the world when it was under construction, and a walk around its remaining platform is awe inspiring. Sadly, this potential wonder of the world was destroyed before it was ever completed thanks to those invading Carthaginians.

From there, we took the golf carts over to the other end of the site to see more clusters of temples on Gaggera hill. You need a bit of imagination to get a sense of the glory of the place, but the descriptive panels and the audio guide (an extra charge but worth it) help you to pick out the sacrificial altar, spot the sluices where water ran through the site and the channels on which the temples’ massive bronze doors slid. Only people who’ve bought into the transport tend to get this far and we were alone in the complex for quite a while, no sound except the crashing of the surf on the beach below.

Then we came back to what was the city’s acropolis, sitting high on a hill that had been sheathed in stone walls. Several still exist. There, you’ll see more temples … the central one features an impressive set of standing columns, though isn’t a complete rectangle … plus the remains of theatres, shops and houses. Architectural historians believe they’ve found evidence of the world’s first circular staircase here. There are some boards in Italian and English but if you want to really grasp subtle points like that it’s best to add the audio guide onto your entry ticket.

For the best understanding of the site, however, you’re going to have to add on a visit to the Palermo Archaeological Museum 75 miles away. The best preserved temple sculptures and hundreds of artefacts unearthed in excavations are stored here, as well as some excellent models, graphics and descriptions that bring Selinunte at its height to life. 

In one of the courtyards they show off a row of lion’s head waterspouts from one temple and also feature several copies painted as they would have been when the temple was in use. 

There’s also an excellent AI headset you can try on to take a walk through the complete temples at their height. There’s only one, but as almost nobody goes to this museum it’s unlikely you’ll have to wait. It’s a shame this stuff isn’t in an interpretive centre down in Selinunte, as it would make a visit even more meaningful and I suspect few tourists actually do both. But those who make the effort to see both will come away with something similar to seeing Pompeii or Herculaneum in conjunction with the archaeological museum in Naples. 

I had also planned a wander around Segesta, conveniently located between Palermo Airport and our hotel outside of Mazara del Vallo. A 90-minute queue to pick up the hire car (Avis/Budget in Palermo Airport NOT recommended) ate into our sightseeing time. When we got there … further off the highway and down far more winding roads that you’d think from the map … we realised that there would be a hefty hike involved to get up to the temple. But there was a rather brilliant view from the car park. And so, dear readers, your reporter failed you, opting for cocktails at the hotel rather than in depth sightseeing. The theatre here, further up the hills and not visible from the road, will have to remain a mystery. 

Our short excursion allows me to observe three things. If you’re basing yourself out of Palermo and want to get a taste of the Sicilian Greek world, this is the most logical day trip and the temple here is impressive enough to satisfy most people. The view from the road is dramatic enough that it’s worth the half hour detour off the motorway to take a look; you can get some great photos without going in. If you are going to explore, however, this is a place for stout walking shoes and lots of energy.

Whichever you opt for, seeing some Greek ruins is an essential part of touring Sicily. They’re an important part of the island’s history and one of the many factors that make it different from the rest of Italy.

Whether made for politics or pleasure, Persian luxuries at the British Museum delight the eye

I'm usually lukewarm, at best, on British Museum special exhibitions drawn primarily from the existing collection. With typical prices for museum shows averaging above £15, it's stretching visitors' good will to charge for something normally on show for free. The current exhibition on luxury in ancient Persia and Greece, however, brings enough magic in its assemblage to overcome my scepticism. The handful of items not from the home store include an astonishing hoard of golden treasures from Bulgaria's National Museum of History that’s worth the admission fee on its own.
Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece digs into an old, familiar story and largely debunks it. Anyone educated in the West grew up with a narrative of us v, the East that’s lasted for more than 2,000 years. The Greeks started it, telling us their democratic, egalitarian, plain-living lifestyle is what ultimately triumphed over the luxury-loving Persians. That’s because all that extravagance, mixed with an authoritarian monarchy, made the Persians weak, effeminate and lazy. You don’t need to be a classical scholar to have drunk this in. Just watch 300 … or any grass-roots politician railing against elites … to see the dynamic alive and well.

Yes, there’s a lot of blingy Persian luxury in these galleries … and that’s probably the main reason for going … but you’ll also learn how the Persian establishment promoted and strategically deployed that luxury to keep power. And you’ll see copious proof of hypocritical Greeks, protesting against luxury but creating and using Hellenised versions for themselves.

If there’s one item that summarises the whole idea of luxury here, it’s a rhyton; and there are a lot of them here. A rhyton is a horn-shaped container used for drinking ceremonies, usually featuring animals but sometimes people.  Contrary to appearances, however, you don’t drink out of it. You hold it in one hand, your shallow drinking bowl in another, then a servant pours wine into the rhyton, which emits the liquid from a hole in its front in a steady stream which you’re supposed to catch in your bowl. This is the kind of ritual you only design to show off, and the amount of coordination required to drink this way would take a lot of practice. Which you’d probably be willing to do if your barware was this extraordinary. 

A set of silver blockbusters hits you on entry: not just the elegant griffin that’s on the exhibition poster but an antelope, a man on a horse and several others along with examples of the drinking bowls they’d spout into. There are other lovely examples throughout the show, culminating in the eight glimmering objects of desire … some animals, some human heads … from Bulgaria’s Panagyurishte treasure. Whatever their composition, you’d stand in amazement at their delicate workmanship. The sinuous buck’s horns. The proud female heads. The boldly-rearing centaurs on an unusual, vase-shaped rhyton with two holes, probably designed to cement peace treaties (and guard against poison) by spouting out two servings at once. But the fact that these are all made from glistening, solid gold kicks the wonder up to another level.

The last piece in the exhibition is a Roman glass model, from hundreds of years later and now meant to be drunk from directly, with the hole filled in. It’s a nod to the enduring love of this glamorous design, and the fact that the Romans carried on the luxury debate and hypocrisy.

From the Greeks, we get a whole case of their version of the rhyton, more miracles of animal artistry but here made from glazed terra cotta to protest their humility. Pushing from aping the tradition to full hypocrisy is a ruler from the Greek world, immortalised in a panel from the Nereid Monument brought up from its usual home downstairs, who is showing off the whole two-handed serving technique. Don’t miss the marvellous human touch of his dog crouched beneath his couch, perhaps waiting to clean up spills.

These objects alone would almost be enough for the show. But we go much further. Jewellery, housewares, clothing and decorative objects all show off the Persian flare for conspicuous consumption and the Greek’s grudging, democratised copies. 

A particularly innovative aspect of the show is incorporating videos of modern craftspeople creating the same opulent objects today. One shows the creation of the colour purple, from the harvesting of a particular gland of the Murex snail to its boiling or drying to get various forms of pigment. In another, a modern Japanese glass artist demonstrates how coloured glass rods get heated, wrapped around a plaster core then smoothed together to create an exact copy of an ancient bowl on display next to the screen. Most fun is a modern textile artist, using ancient sources to weave and recreate a royal outfit, complete with dangling golden lion’s heads and enamelled metal trim. Met Gala catwalk, eat your heart out. 

This isn’t a large show. It’s up in the galleries above the Reading Room, not in the main exhibition space. But every item within it is a rare joy. By bringing it all together in this context the curators have elevated things you might have walked past for years into a treasury of precious objects that will drop your jaw and leave you wanting to win the lottery. You can go out afterwards for a bit of wine and some discussion on whether luxury makes you weak. Maybe even with a rhyton. But I’d wear a bib. We haven’t lost our taste for extravagance, but I suspect we have given up the knack for showy, two-handed alcohol consumption.