Last week we visited the beautifully kept Sicel city of Morgantina — the Classical, Hellenistic and Roman site that is the main part, the rather more off-the-beaten track archaic citadel destroyed by the Sicel leader Ducetius, and the excellent museum in near-by Aidone. The houses on the east hill offer fine examples of wealthy Hellenistic housing, though most of the finest mosaics have long since gone, looted by the Romans, and the agora offers an ambitious example of public monumental architecture in Hellenistic Sicily. Throughout the site provides fine examples of how the indigenous inhabitants responded to the influences of Greeks as well as Carthaginians, and then how the Spanish mercenaries settled there by the victorious Romans (the city made the mistake of following Syracuse briefly out of its alliance with the Romans) adapted the city.
The Spaniards built a market, a macellum around an earlier sanctuary
And puppies… Other study-abroad programs may promise both culture and leisure, but only ICCS-Sicily ‘delivers’ newly-born puppies in an agora:
