Posted by Caroline Powers on Wednesday, May 17, 2017 in 2017 Blog post.

On Sunday, we traveled to the western part of Sicily to visit Villa Romana de Casale near Piazza Armerina and the temples at Agrigento. The villa was enormous, boasting around 3,500 square meters of remarkably well preserved mosaics. The mosaics were beautiful and extremely intricate, each telling a different story to observers. My favorite mosaic was the one picturing women playing different sports: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4s1HHgmE7V-SGJ1NzZOUk5ENW8

The villa also had a bath wing, so we got to see what a typical Roman bath looked like. The temples at Agrigento were similarly very well preserved, particularly the Temple of Concordia: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4s1HHgmE7V-RTdBbG1TV1NtUGs

We also saw the Temple of Hera and remains from the Temple of Zeus, both of which still partially remained.

Growing up in Texas, one of the monuments I visited most was the Alamo in San Antonio, which is well known as the site of a famous battle of the Texas Revolution. The Battle of the Alamo was fought in 1836, less than 200 years ago, which always seemed like such a long time ago to me. The two sites we visited on Sunday, however, were thousands of years old. I always thought 1836 seemed like forever ago, so it was hard for me to fathom that something could have been built thousands of years ago and lasted up until present day. I was amazed that anything was even left of these buildings. These two site visits really highlighted one of biggest differences between American and Sicilian culture that I have noticed so far— our views on time. What Americans consider to be old, Sicilians consider to be relatively new. What Sicilians consider to be old, Americans can barely comprehend. Similarly, during our walking tour of Cefalù on Tuesday, we learned that some parts of Cefalù were much older than the United States. For Americans, it’s crazy to think that that a street you’re walking on or part of a wall in Cefalù could have been built before America was even discovered.