Italy's world-famous Valley of the Temples once contained another temple now swept away by urban blight, a Sicilian journalist claims.
The journalist, Angelo Palillo, is convinced there "was a sixth temple there".
He believes the ruins were "quietly swept under the carpet amid a wild postwar building boom" that has left ugly apartment blocks encroaching on the UNESCO World Heritage site.
Palillo says he has a 1955 aerial photo which "clearly shows a number of pillars and columns strewn about in the area".
In support of his theory, he cites a book written by an English traveller, Sir Richard Colt-Hoare, who visited the fabled ancient Greek site in 1790.
The book, A Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily, states that in the area "there was once the Temple of Modesty".
According to Colt-Hoare, traces of the temple's foundations, pediments and steps were still visible - not as imposing as the five other temples, but valuable archaeological evidence nonetheless.
What is more, Palillo says he has unearthed several references in history books to a cult of modesty - once thought to be exclusively bound to the city of Rome - flourishing at Agrigento.
He says a 16th-century book by a well-known Italian classicist and expert on Magna Graecia, Tommaso Fazello, refers to "a sixth temple at Akragas (the old name for Agrigento), dedicated to Modesty, which was greatly celebrated in its time".
Fazello said the temple had been renamed the 'Torre delle Pulcelle' (Maids' Tower) but was still clearly a Greek temple.
However, he warned that "so many of its columns are cracked that the structure risks crumbling and perhaps disappearing".
The five temples at Agrigento are one of the glories of Magna Graecia, that swathe of southern Italy which was once dotted with wealthy and culturally lavish Greek cities.
There has been a spate of polemics about the proximity of modern eyesores to the area, and repeated demolition and rehousing programmes have been launched.
