VILLA AUREA AGRIGENTO: an English Captain's Dream
Agrigento (Sicily) celebrates its election as Italian Capital of Culture 2025 with a grand exhibition in one of its lesser known treasures – the Villa Aurea (Golden Villa) in the Valley of the Temples, set between two of the most iconic monuments - the Temple of Concordia and the Temple of Hercules.
The early 20th century villa is now the Park of theValley of the Temples headquarters, purchased by the Italian State from the owner, Sir Alexander Hardcastle, a wealthy English nobleman and a passionate archaeologist.
Thanks largely to Hardcastle, the neglected Valley, strewn with fallen columns and fragments of sculptured architectural elements, was reborn. He spent much of his personal fortune on new excavations and the recovery of the abandoned monuments and ended up tragically - penniless in the Agrigento mental asylum, where he died.
The exhibition “I Tesori d'Italia – I Grandi Capolavori dell'Arte” (the Treasures of Italy – the Great Masterpieces of Art) has the ambitious aim of representing all the Italian regions with works by artists native to these areas, some famous, others lesser known, thus giving an overall view of the widespread creative talent that has existed for over seven centuries in the Italian peninsula. It also gives an opportunity to visit Hardcastle's splendid mediterranean garden which was opened to the public in 2019.
“I Tesori d'Italia – I Grandi Capolavori dell'Arte” runs until December in Villa Aurea.
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