Send Gift Baskets to Gela, Italy

According to archaeology, Gela’s acropolis was occupied during the Copper Age in the 4th millennium B.C. and during the Bronze Age in the 2nd millennium B.C.

Around 45 years after Syracuse was founded, colonists from Rhodes and Crete founded Gela around 688 BC. Following archaeology, they settled on the northern slopes of the Molino a Vento, extending for more than 400 meters in the west up to Castelluccio.

Gela, the Sicilian-dialect word for “winter frost,” is the name of the river on which the city is built. The town was founded by Antiphemus and Entimus, according to Diodorus Siculus.

Antiphemus waged war against the nearby city of Omphace, near Gela, as Gela immediately clashed with the Sicani. As well as defeating the town, the Gelans took away a statue attributed to the mythical sculptor Daedalus.

Over the protohistoric remains, the Temple of Athena Lindia, protector of the city, was built on the Acropolis in the 7th century B.C. It was incorporated into a second temple dedicated to Athena in the 6th century.

Throughout Magna Graecia, the Greeks established numerous colonies and exerted a significant influence. Due to the expansionist policies of Gela’s rulers, notably Cleander and Hippocrates, the city launched a series of satellite colonies, including Akragas (Agrigento), and subdued several cities: Kallipolis (according to some, today’s Giarre), Leontini (Lentini), Naxos (Giardini-Naxos) and Zancle (Messina). With the assistance of Corinth and Corcyra, her former colonizing cities, Syracuse was the only colonizing city that managed to escape. In 492 BC, Hippocrates waged war against Syracuse when Kamarina, a Syracusan colony, rebelled. The Syracusan army had been defeated at the Heloros river, so Hippocrates besieged the city, but he was persuaded to retreat in exchange for possessing Camarina. As a result of a battle with the Siculi, the native Sicilians, Hippocrates, died in 491 BC.