Parco Archeologico di Himera

Below the hills of Termini Imerese, on the coastal plain of Buonfornello, lie the excavated bones of Himera, a Greek colony founded in 648 BC and erased in 409 BC. Its temple, hillside streets and vast necropoleis hold the evidence of two famous battles and a city that never rose again.

Why it matters

Himera was the westernmost Greek colony on Sicily's northern coast, founded in 648 BC by Chalcidians from Zancle, modern Messina, together with exiles from Syracuse. The site preserves a rarity: a Greek city whose life ended abruptly in antiquity, so its streets, sanctuaries and cemeteries were never built over by later centuries. Under its walls in 480 BC a coalition of Sicilian Greeks defeated a Carthaginian army in one of the ancient world's defining battles; in 409 BC the Carthaginians returned and destroyed the city for good. Excavation has recovered more than thirteen thousand tombs, including mass graves holding the fallen of both battles, which makes Himera as much a document of war as of colonization. The lyric poet Stesichorus was a native son, and the finds displayed in the on-site museum rank among the most important of western Sicily.

What to notice

Two linked zones are open to the public. The first is the area of the Tempio della Vittoria, the Temple of Victory, the great sacred building associated with the triumph of 480 BC and first excavated by Pirro Marconi between 1926 and 1930; it was the city's only peripteral temple, ringed by columns. The second is the città alta on the hill, where the excavated urban plan shows blocks of housing and the sanctuary of Athena; near the temple precinct the museum displays the extraordinary gold lamina with a running Gorgon that came from that sanctuary. The museum, opened in 1984 in a building designed by Franco Minissi, displays the Phiale Aurea of Caltavuturo, a gold votive cup dating to the fourth or third century BC.

Context and history

The colony's founding is dated to 648 BC, led — as the park authority recounts — by three oecists, Euclide, Simo and Sacone, and mixing Chalcidian settlers with Doric exiles recorded by Thucydides. The city grew quickly, with major town-planning works from the first half of the sixth century BC, and an inscription found on Samos attests its early tensions with the Sicani of the interior. After the battle of 480 BC the city passed under the control of Theron of Agrigento, who repopulated it with Doric settlers, before regaining its independence. The end came in 409 BC, when a Carthaginian army took and destroyed Himera. A few years later Himeraians helped found Thermai Himeraiai, the baths settlement at the neighbouring hot springs that became today's Termini Imerese — the modern town is, in a direct line, the colony's heir. The site's identity was already recognized in the sixteenth century; systematic exploration of the upper city began in 1963, and excavation continues. In 2016 the museum gained a wing dedicated to Pirro Marconi, presenting finds from the western necropolis and the Temple of Victory.