The Valley of the Temples is amongst the most evocative sites of the Greek world and one of the most important complexes outside Greece. You will visit the temples that stand on the high ridge overlooking the sea, walk the Sacred Way, and discover the magnificence of the Concordia Temple, which was converted into a Christian church in the 6th century and because of that spared from much of the devastation which afflicted the site over the centuries. You will walk between the Temple of Zeus ruins, the largest temple built by the Greeks, destroyed to build the harbor near Porto Empedocle.
Scala dei Turchi’s cliff rises between two fine sandy beaches, and to access it you have to proceed along the coast and climb into an ascent similar to a large natural limestone staircase. Scala dei Turchi has a wavy and irregular shape, with lines that are not rough but sweet and roundish. The name comes from the past raids of Saracens pirates, named conventionally by locals as “Turchi" (Turkish), these pirates in fact found this site as a safer landing place for their ships, saving them from the beating of the hammering African winds, compared to the rest of the southern coastline.
