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Province Of Agrigento
The province of Agrigento (; ) is a province in the autonomous island region of Sicily, Italy, situated on its south-western coast. Following the suppression of the Sicilian provinces, it was replaced in 2015 by the Free Municipal Consortium of Agrigento (Italian: ''libero consorzio comunale di Agrigento''). It has an area of , and a total population of 474,493. There are 43 ''comuni'' (: ''comune'') in the province. History and location It is surrounded by province of Palermo in the north, Trapani in the west, Mediterranean Sea in the south, and Caltanissetta in the east. Gela inhabitants founded the province in the 6th century BC as Akragas. Carthage destroyed the province in 406 BC, but it was later ruled by the Romans, Goths, Byzantines, and Arabs. The Arabs rebuilt several parts of the province. Several ancient Doric temples were constructed during the 6th and 5th century BC to worship Hercules, Jupiter, Juno, Castor, Pollux, and Demeter. They are located in the Valley of T ...
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Provinces Of Italy
The provinces of Italy ( ; Grammatical number#Overview, sing.  ) are the second-level administrative divisions of the Italy, Italian Republic, on an intermediate level between a municipality () and a regions of Italy, region (). Since 2015, provinces have been classified as "institutional bodies of second level". There are currently 107 institutional bodies of second level in Italy, including 80 ordinary provinces, 2 autonomous provinces, 4 regional decentralization entities, 6 free municipal consortia, and 14 Metropolitan cities of Italy, metropolitan cities, as well as the Aosta Valley region (which also exercises the powers of a province). Italian provinces (with the exception of the current Sardinian provinces) correspond to the NUTS statistical regions of Italy, NUTS 3 regions. Overview A province of the Italy, Italian Republic is composed of many municipalities (). Usually several provinces together form a region; the region of Aosta Valley is the sole exception—i ...
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Licata
Licata (, ; , whence or ''Plintis''), formerly also Alicata (), is a city and ''comune'' located on the south coast of Sicily, at the mouth of the Salso River (the ancient ''Himera''), about midway between Agrigento and Gela. It is a major seaport developed at the turn of the twentieth century, shipping sulfur, sulphur, the refining of which has made Licata the largest European exporting centre, and Bitumen, asphalt, and at times shipping cheese. West of the port city there is a series of pocket beaches separated by wave-cut headlands as high as . (Amore 2002). History Ancient The settlement was frequented by the Phoenicians who traded there between the 12th and 8th centuries BC. At the end of the 7th century BC the Geloi (inhabitants of ancient Gela, in Magna Graecia) built a fortified station to guard the mouth of the Salso (''Himera'') river. In the first half of 6th century BC Phalaris, tyrant of Agrigento, built a fortified outpost. The first settlement was probabl ...
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Marsala Wine
Marsala is a fortified wine, dry or sweet, produced in the region surrounding the Italian city of Marsala in Sicily. Marsala first received ''Denominazione di Origine Controllata'' (DOC) status in 1969. The European Union grants Protected designation of origin (PDO) status to Marsala and most other countries limit the use of the term ''Marsala'' to products from the Marsala area. While unfortified wine is also produced in the Marsala region, it does not qualify for the Marsala DOC. History Marsala fortified wine was probably first popularized outside Sicily by the Liverpool merchant John Woodhouse. In 1773, he landed at the port of Marsala and discovered the local wine produced in the region, which was aged in wooden casks and tasted similar to Spanish and Portuguese fortified wines then popular in England. Fortified wine in Marsala has always been made using a process called ''in perpetuum'', which is similar to the '' solera'' system used to produce Sherry in Jerez ...
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Marsala
Marsala (, ; ) is an Italian comune located in the Province of Trapani in the westernmost part of Sicily. Marsala is the most populated town in its province and the fifth largest in Sicily.The town is famous for the docking of Giuseppe Garibaldi on 11 May 1860 (the ''Expedition of the Thousand'') and for its Marsala wine. A feature of the area is the Stagnone Lagoon Natural Reserve – a marine area with salt ponds. Marsala is built on the ruins of the ancient Carthaginian city of Lilybaeum, and includes in its territory the archaeological site of the island of Motya, an ancient Phoenician town. The modern name likely derived from the Arabic (''marsā ʿaliyy'', "Ali's harbor"), or possibly (''marsā llāh'', "God's harbor"). Geography Situated at the extreme western point of Sicily, the town was founded on Lilibeo Cape from where the Aegadian Islands and the Stagnone Lagoon can be seen. Territory The territory of Marsala, , has a rich cultural and landscape heritage ...
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Strait Of Sicily
The Strait of Sicily (also known as Sicilian Strait, Sicilian Channel, Channel of Sicily, Sicilian Narrows and Pantelleria Channel; or the ; or , ' or ') is the strait between Sicily and Tunisia. The strait is about wide and divides the Tyrrhenian Sea and the western Mediterranean Sea, from the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The maximum depth is . The island of Pantelleria lies in the middle of the strait. There are regular ferries between Sicily and Tunis across the Strait of Sicily; a tunnel has been proposed to link the two regions. Flows Deep currents in the strait flow from east to west, and the current nearer the surface travels from west to east. This unusual water flow is of interest to oceanographers. Within the Central Mediterranean sea it is one of the topographically complex regions. With a length of 600 km it connects the Eastern and Western Mediterranean basins. The strait is delimited by two systems; at the eastern side it is connected with the Ioni ...
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Empedocles
Empedocles (; ; , 444–443 BC) was a Ancient Greece, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is known best for originating the Cosmogony, cosmogonic theory of the four classical elements. He also proposed forces he called Love and Strife which would mix and separate the elements, respectively. Empedocles challenged the practice of animal sacrifice and killing animals for food. He developed a distinctive doctrine of reincarnation. He is generally considered the last Greek philosopher to have recorded his ideas in verse. Some of his work survives, more than is the case for any other pre-Socratic philosopher. Empedocles' death was mythologized by ancient writers, and has been the subject of a number of literary treatments. Life The exact dates of Empedocles' birth and death are unknown, and ancient accounts of his life conflict on the exact details. However, they agree that he was born in the early 5th cent ...
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Luigi Pirandello
Luigi Pirandello (; ; 28 June 1867 – 10 December 1936) was an Italians, Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art". Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian language, Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd. Biography Early life Pirandello was born into an upper-class family in Girgenti (now Agrigento), Sicily, near the poor suburb of Porto Empedocle. His family's surname had originally been the Greek language, Greek "Pirangelos" (Greek language, Greek: ), which had been phonetically corrupted. Pirandello was of Greeks, Greek descent, as he noted himself in an interview to Kostas Ouranis in 1934. The area of his birth was called "Caos", from , Sicilian language, Sici ...
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Ravanusa
Ravanusa ( Sicilian: ''Rivinusa'') is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Agrigento in the Italian region Sicily, located about southeast of Palermo and about east of Agrigento. Ravanusa is near the Monte Saraceno archaeological site, an ancient Greek settlement thought to be that of the city of Kakyron. The Muslim Arab domination begins at the beginning of the 9th century, more precisely from 829, when the Muslims occupy Agrigento for the first time and lasts until July 25, 1086. With the arrivals of the Normans, Ruggero Altavilla, conquered Kerkent (Agrigento) on July 25, 1086 - said Malaterra, and he immediately began the conquest of eleven castles, including Licata, Bifar, Muclof, Naro and Remise, all familiar to the Ravanusani, as a locality. Once Ravanusa was conquered by the Normans, they introduced a new political and economic-social order in the conquered territories; feudalism, born in the 9th century, under the Carolingian Empire. The fiefs, large landho ...
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Menfi
Menfi is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Agrigento in the Italian region Sicily, located about southwest of Palermo and about northwest of Agrigento. The town lies some from the south coast of Sicily, between the rivers Belice and Carboj. In 1910, a full third of the population of the town of Menfi had emigrated to the United States. Other major recipients were Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela. Main sights *A tower (''Torre Federiciana''), which is the remains of a medieval castle built by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen in 1238, perhaps over an Arab fortification. *''Chiesa Madre'' ("Mother Church"), built in the 18th century but destroyed by an earthquake in 1968. It was later rebuilt. *Church of St. Joseph (1715). The remains of an Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (befor ...
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Raffadali
Raffadali is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Agrigento in the Italy, Italian region of Sicily, located about south of Palermo and about northwest of Agrigento. Geography The commune's territory covers an area of around 1.617 hectares and has a population density of 586.12 inhabitants per km². It is a hilly region between the rivers Platani (river), Platani and Salso, located 425 m above sea level. The physical aspect of the area is characterised by white marl and brown soils and regosols. The area was classified as seismic zone 2 (medium-high) in the Italian earthquake risk classification system, by Prime Minister of Italy, Prime Ministerial ordinance 3274 (20/03/2003). The area's climate is of the Mediterranean type, with an average temperature of 26-28 °C and highs of 30-40 °C in July and August. The Italian government classifies the climate as zone C, 1177 degree days. The old heart of the city consists of a thick network of narrow streets wit ...
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Porto Empedocle
Porto Empedocle () is a town and ''comune'' in Italy on the coast of the Strait of Sicily, administratively part of the province of Agrigento. It was named after Empedocles, a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of the city of Akragas (present-day Agrigento), in his day a Greek colony in Sicily. The primary industries of Porto Empedocle are agriculture, fishing, ironworking, pharmaceuticals and rock salt refining. Physical geography Climate Porto Empedocle is the second ''comune'' with the lowest amount of degree days in Italy. It is in the climatic zone A of the . History Born as a port zone in the old Girgenti, today called Agrigento, under the name of Marina di Girgenti (seashore of Girgenti), since in the 15th century it was the main cereal trading centre of the region. From 1549 to 1554, by order of the viceroy Vega, Torre del caricatore of Girgenti, already known during the ancient times (as it probably already existed before the Angevin period), was rest ...
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Ribera, Agrigento
Ribera (Sicilian language, Sicilian: ''Rivela'') is a ''comune'' in the province of Agrigento, Region of Sicily, southern Italy, between the Verdura and Magazzolo valleys in the so-called Plain of San Nicola. The town is connected by the SS115 state road, leading from Trapani to Syracuse, Sicily, Syracuse. The Platani River, the third Sicilian river, flows nearby. It has enormously contributed to developing both farming and tourism in the area. Its mouth has been designated as a natural reserve. History The comune probably rose on the site of the ancient Allava, to which the Byzantine Empire, Byzantine necropolis near the modern town may possibly be attributed. In 1627, Luigi Guglielmo Moncada, Prince of Paternò, founded a new centre named after his wife, Maria Alfan di Ribera; the new centre developed rapidly, thanks to the fertility of the soil and the accessibility of the area. It is the birthplace of Prime Minister Francesco Crispi. Main sights Sights include: *The Chiesa ...
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