Il Santuario di Zeus Olympios ad Agrigento: da Akragas al Grand Tour, al 3D

Abstract

The sacred landscape of the Sanctuary of Zeus Olympios and its perception have been transformed over time, maintaining the close interconnection between sacred structures and 'nature' with which the Akragantines had designed this and other of the sanctuaries of the colonial polis. In particular, the spatial articulation and plurality of sacred structures that characterised it in antiquity have remained in the shadows for centuries, while the monumental Olympieion has catalysed attention; so the sanctuary context in which the building was originally set has been erased. Moreover, the evanescence of the structures surrounding the colossal temple and the state of ruin of the building have marked the physiognomy of a particularly evocative landscape of ruins, in which the naturalistic component has taken on special prominence. As a result, the perception of the ancient context developed through archaeological research in the 19th and 20th centuries - focused almost exclusively on the gigantic Teronian temple - and the perception of the historicised landscape, reshaped in the last century through the various interventions in the archaeological area, have diverged significantly. After the research developed in the 1920s and between the 1950s and 1960s, which also brought to light the other structures located within the sacred area, the new investigations carried out since 2012 by the University of Palermo have focused on the unitary interpretation of the sanctuary complex and the evolution of the sacred landscape over time. Now the latter can be restored and reconstructed thanks to new technologies. The present contribution aims to illustrate this path, recovering the two main features of the sanctuary (which have developed and been perceived differently over time): monumentality and the close interconnection between the natural and built landscape.