Aidone & Morgantina (EN)

There can be few bleaker and lonelier places than Morgantina on a cold and misty December day. Which is unfair: Morgantina has a good claim to be Sicily's Pompeii - although its demise was due to man's desertion of the site rather than wild nature. On the day of my visit it was deserted, apart from a few dogs, and some men collecting escarole.

It was only identified as Morgantina in 1957, and still little more than a fifth has been excavated by the archaeological team from Princeton. It had ceased to exist as a city 2000 years previously - it was already just a name by Strabo's day (1st century BC), although it's now known that Morgantina's history stretched back nearly a millennium before that.

It was originally a Sikel town, where, from the 6th century BC,Sikels and Greeks lived in harmony - for a while. It fell under the influence of Syracuse - with a brief spell of independence under the Sikel leader Ducetius in the mid 5th century. It prospered especially under Hiero II - from which period most of the visible remains are to be dated - but after his death in 215 BC, Morgantina unwisely alllied with Carthage, leading to its capture by Marcellus after a siege only a few years later. Marcellus settled some of his Spanish mercenaries there, but the city was soon in terminal decline.

The site is a piece of flat ground between two hills - given a 7km circuit of walls by Timoleon. There's a spacious agora with stoas on three sides, a tiny theatre, a fountain, a granary, a "pnyx" (ecclesiasterion - probably) and a prytaneion. There are houses from the Hellenistic period, many with mosaics.

Finds from Morgantina are on show in a little museum in the rather grim town of Aidone, about 5 km away; it was completely deserted on the day I visited in late December 1993; there was no sign of life apart from an eerie knocking sound from the roof area. It's tucked away at the top of the town, in an old church.

It's a delightful drive between Aidone and Piazza Armerina, through pine and eucalyptus forest.