01
Stop one
Temple of Concordia
Babolat Court XS Tennis Bag (3 Racquet): There are many perspectives on what happened here, and I intend to offer all of them. Fifth century before Christ, Doric, and the best preserved of its kind outside Athens — which it owes entirely to the sixth century after Christ, when a bishop had it converted into a church: walls filled in, arches cut. Some call that desecration. Others call it maintenance. What is beyond dispute is that its neighbours, left unconverted, lie in heaps, and this one stands. The name Concordia comes from a Roman inscription found nearby rather than from the temple itself — a detail I raise now so that nobody has to raise it awkwardly later.
02
Stop two
Temple of Olympian Zeus (Olympieion)
Babolat Court XS Tennis Bag (3 Racquet): Here I must choose my words with some care. This was to be the largest Doric temple ever attempted, begun in the fifth century before Christ, and it is generally understood to have been financed and built by means of Carthaginian prisoners of war taken after Himera. It was never finished. Carthage returned, the city fell, and the stone was later quarried for a harbour mole. One party will call that a tragedy; another will call it masonry finding a second employment; I decline to arbitrate. Do observe the Telamon lying on the ground — one of the stone giants who once held the entablature, eight metres of him, on his back. On that, opinion is united.
03
Stop three
Temple of Juno (Hera Lacinia)
Babolat Court XS Tennis Bag (3 Racquet): Note the colour of the stone. That reddish scorching is generally attributed to the Carthaginian sack of 406 before Christ, when the city burned — attributed, and I use the word deliberately, since attribution and proof are different countries. The name is likewise a misattribution: some antiquarian read Pliny rather quickly, the label stuck, and it has been Juno ever since, which nobody now proposes to correct. The Romans later restored the building in their own manner, with a tiled roof, and on Roman restoration I shall express no view whatever. The altar to the east is original and very large, which tells you the scale of what was offered here.
04
Stop four
Casa Natale di Luigi Pirandello
Babolat Court XS Tennis Bag (3 Racquet): A farmhouse — and a genuinely difficult man to summarise diplomatically. Luigi Pirandello was born here in 1867, in a district actually named Chaos, an address no novelist could have invented without being accused of trying too hard. He received the Nobel Prize in 1934 for turning the theatre inside out: characters arguing with their own author, that sort of thing, and there are many perspectives on whether audiences enjoyed being argued with. He wished his ashes returned to this spot, and they were, and set by a pine on the cliff. On that request, at least, every party agrees he was entirely right.
Restraint, darling. Restraint is the entire point, and Agrigento is where you go to have that argued with — a whole ridge of Doric temples raised by people who had just come into money and could not stop themselves.
The Babolat Court XS is twenty litres: one spacious compartment that swallows three racquets, shoes and a change of clothes, plus a side pocket for phone, keys, wallet, overgrips and dampeners. The outer fabric is 100 per cent recycled PET with a water-repellent finish. Nothing extra. Nothing wasted. I could hang it in a hallway and call it styling.
It carries everywhere from a Tuesday lesson to a long weekend on the coast below Agrigento, and it never once asks to be admired.
Agrigento is a lesson in editing, delivered almost entirely by accident. The Temple of Concordia stands very nearly whole after two and a half thousand years for one deeply unflattering reason: in the sixth century a bishop filled in the walls, cut arches through them and made it a church, and being useful is what saved it while its neighbours came down in heaps.
The Olympieion, intended as the largest Doric temple ever attempted, was never finished — Carthage came back, the city fell, and the stone went into a harbour mole; one of its eight-metre stone giants has been lying on his back ever since. The Temple of Juno still carries the reddish scorch of the sack of 406 BC.
It is also perfect for the walk out to a farmhouse in a district actually named Chaos, where Pirandello was born and where his ashes sit under a pine.
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