15. Syracuse

Wednesday, Oct 23rd.  Today we are in Syracuse which was founded by Greek settlers led by Archias from Corinth and Tenea in 734 BC.  This city grew to be the most important city in Magna Graecia.  It was once described by Cicero as "the greatest Greek city and the most beautiful of them all".  It was allied with Sparta and Corinth and against Athens.  Its power and wealth led to conflict with the Carthaginians who ruled western Sicily.  In 480 BC allied with Agrigento, Syracuse defeated the Carthaginians in the Battle of Himera led by Hamilcar.  A temple dedicated to Athena was erected to commemorate the victory on the site of today's cathedral.  Like the rest of Sicily it was eventually controlled by the Romans, then the Saracens, then the Normans, then the Spanish until the Italian unification in 1865.  We are staying on Ortigia Island which is the oldest part of the city and sits in the bay.  We are staying at the Des Etragers Hotel & Spa that sits right on the water's edge overlooking the bay.  Here is a photo of our hotel.  Our room is on the first floor with balconies and it just about in the center.

Here is the view out from our balcony.

The reason the Greeks settled on this island is the natural harbor and the fresh water spring that is just outside our hotel.  Here is a photo of the "Fonte Aretusa".  The feathery leaves you see in the photo are papyrus and the local artists sell paintings done on paper made from this papyrus.

Looking south from the front of our hotel you can see the fortress, Castello Maniace, that was built in 1240 on the south end of the island in an attempt to protect it.

Here is an areal view of Ortigia Island looking north.  You can see the fort at the south end of the island.  Our hotel is on the left side and about half way up, just where you see the clump of trees.

That clump of trees was just across the street from our balcony and there were literally thousands of birds roosting in the trees and creating a huge racket.  We had to keep our balcony doors closed so we could hear ourselves.

After breakfast we did a walking tour of the island.  Our first stop was the Piazza Duomo which contains the Duomo and the Basilica of Santa Lucia.  Here is a photo of the Piazza.

The Basilica of Santa Lucia, a Byzantine church built, according to tradition, in the same place as the martyrdom of the saint in 303 AD. The current appearance is from the 15th-16th centuries. The most ancient parts still preserved include the portal, the three half-circular apses and the first two orders of the belfry. Under the church are the Catacombs of St. Lucy. For this church Caravaggio painted the Burial of St. Lucy, which hangs above the main altar. Santa Lucia is the patron saint of Syracuse and here is a photo of the church.

Here is a photo of the Duomo or Cathedral.  The facade is recent (relatively) and dates from 1753 as the original facade was destroyed in the earthquake of 1693.

As I mentioned earlier, the Greeks built a temple on this site to Athena and it is still there but now converted to the cathedral.  This plan shows the layout of the Cathedral with the columns and structure of the original Greek temple shown in red.

Here is a photo of the side aisle and on the right you can see the original Greek columns embedded in the wall.  The arches on the left were cut in the original interior wall of the temple.

Here is an outside view of the sidewall of the Cathedral and once again you can see the original Greek columns embedded in the wall.

When the earthquake of 1693 happened, the bulk of the building, which was the original Greek temple, was not damaged as it was built on a very solid and massive foundation, however, the facade which had been built in front of the temple and not on the temple's foundation collapsed and had to be replaced.

Here is a photo of the main altar of the Cathedral.

This next pair of photos show one of the side altars and give you and idea of the beauty of this Cathedral.

We continued our walking tour of the city.  Having been built long before the advent of the automobile, the streets are very narrow and for the most part have no sidewalks so you end up with pedestrians and cars competing for the roadway.  Here are a couple of photos of the streets and this is the main part of the town.

Syracuse is also famous as the birthplace of Archimedes.  He was born in 287 BC and was famous as a mathematician and inventor.  The most widely known anecdote about Archimedes tells of how he invented a method for determining the volume of an object with an irregular shape. A votive crown for a temple had been made for King Hiero II, who had supplied the pure gold to be used, and Archimedes was asked to determine whether some silver had been substituted by the dishonest goldsmith.  Archimedes had to solve the problem without damaging the crown, so he could not melt it down into a regularly shaped body in order to calculate its density. While taking a bath, he noticed that the level of the water in the tub rose as he got in, and realized that this effect could be used to determine the volume of the crown. Water is incompressible, so the submerged crown would displace an amount of water equal to its own volume. By dividing the mass of the crown by the volume of water displaced, the density of the crown could be obtained. This density would be lower than that of gold if cheaper and less dense metals had been added. Archimedes then took to the streets naked, so excited by his discovery that he had forgotten to dress, crying "Eureka!" (Greek: meaning "I have found it!").  The test was conducted successfully, proving that silver had indeed been mixed in. Unfortunately, Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier in 212 BC during the second Punic War when Syracuse had sided with the Carthaginians and Rome had captured the city after a two year siege.

Here is a photo of the Piazza Achimede with the Fountain of Diana in the center.

We next came to the ruins of the Temple of Apollo.  All that remains is stumps of some of the columns on one side and a portion of the inner wall.

One of the problems with living in a city with this much history is that when you try to do any construction and you start to dig you run into ruins of something much older as in this photo when the city tried to improve one of the streets and ended up finding Roman ruins.

We then crossed the bridge onto mainland and walked to the archaeological park where the first thing we came across was a massive Roman altar.  This thing is over 200 meters long (a meter is a little bit bigger then a yard) so this altar is longer then two football fields.  In the photo it extends all of the way to the trees in the background.

Next we came to the Greek theater. This is one of the largest ever built and has 67 rows, divided in nine sections with eight aisles.  It was built into the slope of a hill and is still used today for performances.  Here is what it looked like.  The blocks lying in the foreground are where the stage was located.

Off in the corner and not marked in any way was a tomb that goes back to before the Greeks arrived on the island.

A short distance away were the ruins of the Roman amphitheater.  The floor of this amphitheater used to be covered in sand to soak up the blood of animals and people that were killed.  After the event they would wash away the blood and sand and then bring in more sand for the next event.

Also in this park is the "latomie" or stone quarries where all of the stone used in construction came from. This latomie was also used as a prison for Athenian prisoners of war and thousands died due to starvation and exposure.  Here we are heading down into the latomie

Down in the latomie is an artificial cave known as the Orecchio di Dionisio  or Ear of Dionysius.  No one really knows why this cave was built or what they used it for.  Here is a photo of the entrance.

And here is a photo I took inside.  Once you got away from the entrance it got pitch black so I had to use my flash to take this photo.  The cave goes on for quite a ways.

After leaving the archaeological park we walked back to the Piazza Duomo where we were going to have lunch.  While we were waiting to go into lunch I noticed this young lady (probably a college student) who was dressed in a toga and sporting a beard.  She was apparently part of some college art project as she would stand still for about 10 seconds, then take a couple of steps  and then stop for 10 seconds, etc.  There were two or three others with her taking pictures and directing her where to go.  Here is a photo of her in front of the Duomo and the next one shows her having gone around to the side of the Duomo and getting some  instructions from her "director."

As in Noto, Syracuse has a better grade of beggar.  Earlier this young lady had been standing on a small pedestal in the Piazza, dressed all in white, with a white face and her bowl on the ground in front of her. Here she was taking a break and chatting on her cell phone.

For lunch we were invited to the Palazzo Beneventano del Bosco, which was originally built in the Middle Ages but extensively modified between 1779 and 1788.  When you went through the entrance you ended up in a very pleasant courtyard.  Our host was the Barone Pietro Beneventano del Bosco whose family arrived in Sicily back in the 14th-century.  He gave us a tour of the building, then a wine tasting (he owns a winery), then a really great buffet lunch and then super almond cookies and espresso for dessert.  Here is a photo his digs which are right on the Piazza Duomo.

This was the end of our touring for the day.  I went back to the hotel to work on this blog while the ladies went shopping.