From the Greek στενωποί (stenōpói), the stenopoi were minor roads running north to south. In the Hippodamus urban plan, they intersected the main streets perpendicularly to create regular quadrangular blocks....

After two centuries of Muslim dominion in the territory, the advent of the Normans who conquered Agrigento in 1086 returned Christianity to the land of Sicily. Gerland, a Celtic warrior related to the Hauteville family, arrived in Agrigento after the Norman troops. His mission was to bring Christi...

The pronaos in Greek temples indicates the space between the cella (shrine) and the front colonnade of the temple. The word comes from the Greek πρόναος, pronaos, formed by προ, pro, "forward" and ναός, nàos, "temple": in front of the temple....

From the Greek πλατεῖα (platêia), the plateia were main roads running east to west. In the Hippodamus urban plan, they intersected the minor streets perpendicularly to create regular quadrangular blocks....

Pindar was a Greek lyric poet born between 520 and 517 BC in a village near Thebes in Boeotia. He was not only an artist, but an intellectual always seeking new knowledge. Around 490 BC he moved to Sicily, where he clashed with Simonides and Bacchylides, two other great lyric poets, to gain the fa...

In Greek temples, the opisthodomos was the back of the temple, which was used as a treasury. The room was symmetrically opposite the entrance portico, called a pronaos....

Mount Olympus is located in northern Greece and measures almost 3000 metres high. It is where the ancient Greeks believed was the home of the gods. The top of the mountain, often snow-capped and shrouded in clouds, inaccessible to those who looked at it, seemed to merge with the sky, creating an e...

In Greek temples of Doric order, metopes and triglyphs were the alternating decorative elements on the frieze. Triglyphs were stone tablets decorated with three vertical grooves, while metopes were the portions of smooth wall alternating with the triglyphs. In the temples of Akragas, these two e...

Doric columns are different to columns from the other two Greek orders (Ionic and Corinthian) due to the lack of a base at the bottom. The capital, however, is the element that best distinguishes the style: it consists of a swollen truncated-cone-shaped moulding, surmounted by a rectangular abacus...

Mount Etna is an active volcano in continuous evolution. Its height, today around 3330 metres above sea level, changes continuously according to its eruption activity, which is one of the most documented in the world. Etna's monitoring has had a significant impact on all earth science investigatio...