Agrigento

Agrigento, is a city on the southern coast of Sicily, Italy, and capital of the province of Agrigento. It is renowned as the site of the ancient Greek city of Akragas in Greek, Agrigentum in Latin and Kirkent or Jirjent in Arabic, one of the leading cities of Magna Graecia during the golden age of Ancient Greece.
Akragas grew rapidly, becoming one of the richest and most famous of the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia. It came to prominence under the 6th-century tyrants Phalaris and Theron, and became a democracy after the overthrow of Theron’s son Thrasydaeus.
The city was disputed between the Romans and the Carthaginians during the First and the Second Punic War, when both Rome and Carthage fought to control it. The Romans eventually captured Akragas in 210 BC and renamed it Agrigentum, although it remained a largely Greek-speaking community for centuries thereafter. It became prosperous again under Roman rule and its inhabitants received full Roman citizenship following the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the city passed into the hands of the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy and then the Byzantine Empire. In 828 AD the Saracens captured the diminished remnant of the city. They pronounced its name as Kerkent in Arabic; it was thus Sicilianized as “Girgenti”. It retained this name until 1927, when Benito Mussolini’s government reintroduced an Italianized version of the Latin name.
Agrigento was captured by the Normans under Count Roger I in 1087. In 1860, the inhabitants enthusiastically supported Giuseppe Garibaldi in his conquest of southern Italy (in the course of the Unification of Italy).