In southern Sicily, where the hills of Agrigento overlook the Mediterranean Sea, an international team of archaeologists has brought to light an exceptional structure that offers an unprecedented window into the educational system of Ancient Greece. It is an ancient classroom discovered in March 2025 by researchers from the Freie Universität Berlin, under the direction of Professor Monika Trümper and Dr. Thomas Lappi, in collaboration with the Politecnico di Bari and the Parco Archeologico Valle dei Templi di Agrigento.

The discovery, which is part of a vast and monumental Greek gymnasium, confirms the high degree of sophistication reached in the comprehensive education of young citizens in the ancient city of Akragas—the original name of Agrigento—founded around 580 BCE as the largest Greek colony in Sicily.

In this context, the gymnasium was not merely a place for physical exercise, but a multifunctional architectural complex in which body and intellect were educated simultaneously, in a formative vision that combined physical health with civic virtue and critical thinking.

Agrigento gymnasium auditorium
Classroom orchestra with registration blocks, from the south. Credit: Rolf Sporleder / FU Berlin, Institut für Klassische Archäologie

The excavation has revealed a roofed semicircular classroom or auditorium with eight stepped rows of seating that surrounded the performance space, capable of accommodating about 200 people. This room, with theatrical characteristics, constitutes a unique case among known gymnasiums in the Greek world. Until now, no other facility of this type included a comparable auditorium at such an early date. In fact, the only similar example is found in Pergamon, in present-day Turkey, where a gymnasium with an auditorium is not documented until at least two and a half centuries later.

The Agrigento auditorium opens onto a rectangular hall measuring 11 by 23 meters, equipped with benches, and designed for classes, demonstrations, and intellectual competitions. The layout of these spaces suggests that the architects placed as much importance on cultivating the mind as on physical development, reinforcing the notion that the gymnasium was a true educational institution, in the broadest sense of the term.

The importance of the discovery is not limited to the architecture. In the orchestra of the auditorium, the central space where teachers and students presented their exercises before an audience, the archaeological team found two blocks of white limestone carefully engraved with inscriptions in Ancient Greek.

The letters, highlighted with red pigment, mention the gymnasiarchos—the director of the gymnasium—and refer to the renovation of the roof of the apodyterion, or changing room. This project was privately funded by a local citizen, who dedicated it to Hermes and Heracles, deities traditionally associated with gymnasiums.

Agrigento gymnasium auditorium
One of the gigantic Atlanteans from the temple of Olympian Zeus in Agrigento. Credit: Palickap / Wikimedia Commons

This epigraphic testimony, dated by the writing style to the late 1st century BCE, is especially valuable as one of the few preserved examples of inscriptions in Agrigento. Although the city remained inhabited for over a thousand years, written records documenting everyday social life are extremely scarce.

The inscription also reveals the persistence of the Greek language, offices, and customs even after the city was incorporated into Roman rule. The gymnasium, despite the political change, continued to be a central hub in the education of the young, preserving its function and cultural significance within a society that, although Romanized, did not abandon its Hellenic heritage.

With this discovery, the gymnasium of Agrigento reinforces its status as a unique case in the western Mediterranean. It was already known that this complex offered exceptional facilities, such as a 200-meter running track and a large pool, but the new discovery of the auditorium and the inscriptions significantly enriches the understanding of its operation and of the social environment that sustained it.

The research team plans to continue the work in 2026, with the goal of uncovering new rooms intended for teaching or training, as well as more inscriptions that may shed light on daily life and the internal organization of this extraordinary Greek gymnasium.

SOURCES

Freie Universität Berlin

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