Agrigento, Kolymbethra Garden to be managed for another 25 years by FAI

A new agreement has been signed between FAI and the Valley of the Temples Archaeological Park to manage the Kolymbethra Garden in Agrigento for the next twenty-five years. Starting in 2025, new services and spaces dedicated to enhancement will be introduced, along with investments in research, including an initial archaeological excavation campaign.

Managed by FAI on behalf of the Sicilian Region from 1999 to 2024, the Kolymbethra Garden has been recovered from neglect and redeveloped through major interventions. Over the past twenty-five years, attention has been paid to the preservation of the historic rural landscape, the protection of traditional crops and natural biodiversity. In addition, regular opening to the public has been guaranteed, with services attracting up to 80,000 visitors a year.

With this new agreement, FAI will be able to continue its activities for another twenty-five years, expanding them with a program of interventions and investments outlined in the plan approved by the Park Board. This plan will take shape as early as 2025, the year in which Agrigento will be the Italian Capital of Culture and in which FAI will celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Among the planned changes will be improved services for visitors, such as a new ticket office with store and water-saving toilets, designed by Studio MCA - Mario Cucinella Architects and donated to FAI. By November 2025, Case Montana, a typical historic rural building located on the Kolymbethra Valley, is scheduled to open to the public. Dating back to the seventeenth century and used for centuries by farmers, the building was purchased by FAI to be restored and integrated into the Garden’s visitor trail. The work includes consolidation of the fragile calcarenite rocky ridge on which the houses stand. The Case Montana houses will be preserved in their authentic simplicity and will offer visitors a concrete testimony to rural life in the Valley of the Temples, from antiquity to the present. Inside them, a multimedia video storytelling, curated by the FAI, will be produced, telling the story of the Garden.

Adjacent to the Montana Houses, a clearing will be transformed into an event space, surrounded by plants typical of the valley. This new area will be able to accommodate more people, preserving the Garden’s crops from the impact of events and also providing opportunities for outdoor school activities.

In addition to the restoration work and fittings, the program includes significant investment in scientific research, in collaboration with the Valley of the Temples Archaeological Park and university institutes. The goal is to deepen the study of the landscape and its evolution and, for the first time, to document and analyze the archaeological evidence in the area, which has never been the subject of systematic study or told to the public.

“A new agreement that sanctions not only the recognition of a job well done in these twenty-five years, but also the commitment to do more in the coming years, with the provision of new services for visitors and tools for understanding the extraordinary history, archaeological and natural, of the Garden of Kolymbethra. The real challenge is to continue to grow, but preserving the extraordinary poetry that comes from the lights, scents and silences, in this small earthly paradise rich in water and full of fruits: one of the most beautiful places in the world,” said FAI President Marco Magnifico.

“The Kolymbethra represents for the Valley of the Temples Park an extraordinary resource not only for its historical, archaeological and agronomic value but because it is plastically an example of how the intervention of private individuals or institutions such as FAI can play an important role in the recovery and preservation of heritage. What until a few decades ago was an uncultivated place is now a garden that preserves biodiversity and is a destination for thousands of tourists every year, and, we are sure, also thanks to the strengthening of the collaboration with the Fund for the Italian Environment, it will represent a must-see destination for visitors to the Capital of Culture 2025,” said Valley of the Temples Park Director Roberto Sciarratta.

Photo by Vincenzo Cammarata.

Agrigento, Kolymbethra Garden to be managed for another 25 years by FAI

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