Agrigento
Hearing
Itinerary B

[4]Noises of the past and sounds of the present

If we think about how the mosaics were created, it is easy to imagine the atmosphere of a building site, with its many noises: the tapping of the lapidarius structor, who broke the stones to create the tiles; the movements of the pictor parietarius, who pierced the medium on which he or she had drawn the shapes, to blow through coal dust that would have impressed the image onto the wall or floor.
Today, admiring the mosaics of Agrigentum means surrendering to the quiet of the Archaeological Museum where some of them are kept, or to the silence of nature while walking through the ancient streets of the Hellenistic-Roman quarter.