Area archeologica di Morgantina

On the Serra Orlando ridge near Aidone lie the ruins of Morgantina, an ancient Sicel and Greek city abandoned in antiquity and never built over again. Its agora, theatre, bath complexes and houses preserve an unusually legible picture of urban life in Hellenistic Sicily.

Why it matters

Morgantina was inhabited for more than a millennium, from Bronze Age settlements to the Roman Republic. Because the abandoned city was not built over by a later town, its street plan, public spaces and houses remain visible across the ridge. The archaeological area includes major public buildings and domestic quarters, while further parts of the ancient city remain underground.

What to notice

The agora’s public buildings include an ekklesiasterion, where citizens assembled, and a nearby theatre. Two bath complexes stand near the western gate and agora. In a residential quarter, the Casa del Ganymede preserves a Hellenistic mosaic floor. The site also includes remains of the earlier settlement on Cittadella hill and a sanctuary at San Francesco Bisconti; the acrolithic statues of Demeter and Kore from that sanctuary are now in the museum at Aidone.

Context and history

Settlement on the site began in the Early Bronze Age, with a Castelluccio-phase village between about 2200 and 1600 BC. In the Early Iron Age, long rectangular huts occupied Cittadella hill. Greek urban development later spread across Serra Orlando, where Hieron II of Syracuse oversaw a regular plan. Rome took the city in 211 BC during the Second Punic War and settled Iberian former mercenaries there. Urban life ended in the first century BC as Sicily was reorganised under Augustus. Archaeological excavations at Serra Orlando began with American missions in the 1950s.