Yesterday, Tony, Dominic, and I visited the magnificent ancient city of Selinunte with our guide Gianluca. I’m always taken aback by this site because it’s expansive. It’s strewn with ruins of massive temples and abandoned homes. To me it possesses ghosts everywhere, who continue to protect it.

Selinunte was a Greek city built on the southwestern coast of Sicily by colonists from the eastern Sicilian Greek outpost of Megara Hyblea. Founded around 651 BC, it displayed its power by building massive temples to dedicated to the gods, like this one pictured, Temple E, which scholars believe was dedicated to Hera. The Doric-style temple was completed between 490 and 480 BC. It was destroyed in 409 A.D. after a 9-day, bloody seige by the Cartheginians.

Next year Tony and I will return for May 2019’s Myths & Mysteries of Sicily tour. More details to be announced.