a memory less ephemeral: excursion to Segesta

Monday 24 October 2022

excursion to Segesta

The early morning weather has been getting clearer each day, and this morning I could actually see a, still slightly hazy, view from my room window when I got up.

I experimented with panoramic settings to get a great, if slightly curvy, view from the tearoom window.

Then down to the lecture room, where today’s schedule of talks started at 8:30am, but finished 1pm, as today is excursion day. We all piled on to a coach, which took us to the even more historic site of Segesta.

As we arrived at the entrance, we could see a hint of the Doric wonders to come.

the top of the temple just visible above the trees

But first, we hopped onto a shuttle bus (that for some reason was called free, yet cost 2Euro) that took us up to some ruins and a Greek theatre. Both the acoustics and the view were fabulous.

We inspected various ruins for a while, then hopped back on the shuttle bus to take us back down the hill. The winding trip down gave us several glimpses of the temple from a distance.

Once back down to the entrance, it was only a short walk up to the temple itself. (Despite not being far, I needed a short stop part way up, due to post-Covid lack of puff.)

wow !

The roof hasn’t fallen down: it was never erected. The temple was never completed, and has stood like this for two and a half thousand years. Signs of partial completion include no internal structures, lack of fluting on the columns, and the construction “knobs” on the base stones, used for attaching ropes. These construction signs are not visible on completed temples, as they would have been chiselled off to give a smooth final finish.

Unlike the ruins up the hill, the temple was never dismantled by the locals for its stones, as it is “too remote”. (Mind you, the ruins up the hill aren’t all that accessible, either!)

The temple is 6 columns wide by 14 columns long, breaking the standard “n by 2n + 1” formula. It was difficult to get a good shot of the side, due to the length. Panoramic view gives a weird curve. But I eventually managed to get far enough away, taking care not to hurtle down into a chasm, to take a normal shot of the entire side view.