17. Taormina

Friday, Oct 26th.  Today is the last day of our tour and we will spend it touring the town of Taormina.  This town is very old having been used by the Sicels (or Siculi) during the Bronze Age before the Greeks arrived in 734 BC.  It is located on the east coast of Sicily about halfway between Messina and Catania. and, as is usual for Sicilian towns, is located on a hill overlooking the Ionian Sea at an elevation of about 250 meters (820 ft.).  During Greek and Roman times it was a walled city with a gate on the north end of town, the Messina gate, and a gate on the south side of town, the Syracuse gate.  It was an important town in Greek times and was where the Timoleon of Corinth first landed when he began his campaign to drive the Carthaginians out of eastern Sicily.  Taormina again played a conspicuous part during the wars of Sextus Pompeius in Sicily, and, from its strength as a fortress, was one of the principal points of the position which he took up in 36 BC, for defense against Octavian.  It became the scene also of a sea-fight between a part of the fleet of Octavian and that of Pompeius, which terminated in the defeat and almost total destruction of the former.  It seems to have been one of the few cities of Sicily that continued under the Roman Empire to be a place of some consideration. Its territory was noted for the excellence of its wine and produced also a kind of marble which seems to have been highly valued.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Taormina continued as one of the more important towns of Sicily.  It was taken by the Arabs in 902 after a siege of two years.  Following two uprisings, the Arabs totally destroyed the town.  During their reign the Arabs built a fort on a hill 150 meters (500 ft.) above the town. Muslim rule of the town lasted until 1078, when it was captured by the Norman Count Roger I of Sicily.  After the fall of the Normans and of their heirs, the Hohenstaufen, Taormina followed the history of Sicily under the Angevins and then the Crown of Aragon.  In 1410 King Martin II of Sicily was elected here by the Sicilian Parliament.  Later Taormina was under Spanish rule, receiving the status of "city" in the 17th century.  In 1675 it was besieged and conquered by the French.  Starting from the 19th century Taormina became a popular tourist resort in the whole of Europe: people who visited Taormina include Oscar Wilde, Nicholas I of Russia, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Nietzsche (who here wrote his Also sprach Zarathustra), Richard Wagner and many others.  During the 20th century, famous residents and visitors  included D. H. Lawrence, Truman Capote, Icelandic writer Halldór Laxness, British writer Daphne Phelps,  Bertrand Russell, British writer Roald Dahl and Tennessee Williams.

Our hotel is the San Dominico Palace and it was originally a Dominican monastery   We are staying in the old part of the hotel and our room is one of the monk's rooms.  Here is a photo of the hall leading down to our room.

And here is a photo of the lobby.

You could tell that this place was old as the walls of our room must have been close to three feet thick.  Here is a photo of a small section of mural that was in the common area of the hotel.

Before we started on our tour of the town, we walked back to the patio for some photos.  Here we are walking down a path through the gardens.

And here is a view from the patio looking down on the bay and the town of Giardino Naxos.

Here is Pat and I getting our picture taken against this glorious background

And here is Chris and Neal, my sister and brother-in-law.

After the photos we went to the central courtyard of the hotel to await our guide.  While there, Neal and one of our fellow travelers had an impromptu dance.

We then headed out for our walking tour of the town.  First thing we came to was this small church which was the chapel for the monastery and of course was dedicated to St. Dominic de Guzman who founded the Order of Preachers more commonly called the Dominicans.

Here is a section of the original walls of the city.

Here is the gate at the north end of town, know as the Messina Gate as the road going north leads to Messina.

Here was are walking down the main street, Corso Umberto I.

Now we are in the Piazza Duomo which contains the main church of the town as well as this fountain.  The small horse on the pedestal is a water fountain and the locals were using it to refill their water bottles.  The statue on top of the fountain is the symbol of the town, a centaur which in this case takes on a female form with, instead of the usual four legs, two legs and two arms holding an orb and a scepter, the attributes of power.

Here is a close up of the statue.

And here is the Cathedral dedicated to St. Nicholas of Bari and dating back to the 13th century.  Its simple facade is ornamented by a Renaissance doorway flanked by two single-light windows with a rose-window above. The crenelations along the roof line have earned it the name of “cathedral-fortress”.  The interior is Gothic  the plan is a Latin cross; the nave is separated from the side-aisles by an arcade of pointed arches. These spring from column shafts of pink marble. The clerestory above comprises simple one-light windows that light the nave.

Here is the main altar.

And here are two of the side altars.

We then proceeded through the town.  The building on the left is the Municipio or town hall.

Here is a better photo of it.  What is interesting here is that before this building was erected, this was the site of a Jewish temple before the Jews were driven out of the town.  When the architect was designing this building he took one of the Star of David ornaments from the temple and embedded it in the wall of the municipio just above the main entrance.

Some of the side streets are very narrow as you can see in this photo.

This is a tourist town and so there were a lot shops catering to tourists.

But the locals still need to east so here is the alley with the produce markets.

Lots of tourist shops.

Here is a photo up a side street, if you look to the top of the hill in the background you can see the walls of the fort that the Arabs built back in about 1,000 AD.

We are in the Piazza IX Aprile and the photo shows the former church of St. Augustine which was built in the in the 15th century and serves as the public library for the town.

More tourist shops.

Now we are in the Piazza Badia and this is the church of St. Catherine of Alexandria.  This church was built in the 16th century, partly on the ruins of the Odeon which was a small Greek theater.  The next photo shows the detail above the doorway.

Right next to the church is the Palazzo Corvaja which was built by the Arabs in the 10th century then owned by the Corvaja family from 1538 to 1945.  Today it is used by the tourist office.

As we leave the Piazza, the road splits with the right going down to the lower part of the town.  Ahead is the main road and more tourist shops.

We've now come to the end of the old town.  Just ahead is the southern gate of the town know as the Syracuse Gate and the road form here takes you to Syracuse.

After we finished touring the town we walked to the outskirts of town to see the Greek/Roman theater.  This theater is one of the most famous in the world and dates to the 7th century BC.  The original theater as built by the Greeks didn't have the walls and columns that you can see in this photo, these were added by the Romans after they conquered Sicily.  A lot of the stone seats for the audience are gone as the locals viewed them as a great source of building material.  This theater is still used and various concerts and performance are put on in this theater.  While we were there, a crew was in the process of dismantling and removing equipment from a recent performance.

Here is a closer photo of the walls that the Romans installed.

Here is a closer view of the stage area.

And here is a panorama shot that I put together showing the theater,

And finally here is a photo I took from the theater showing the town of Taormina with Mt. Etna in the background.

This finished up our tour.  We grabbed a late lunch and then did some shopping.  This evening we had a final reception and dinner on the hotel terrace.  Here is a photo I took of the lights of the town.

Tomorrow we head home.