We wanted to see Siracusa (Syracuse), intending to stop at a campsite a few kilometres outside the city and travelling in by bus. However I discovered that there was an aire in the centre of the city and, checking the location, it turned out to be very close to the archaeological museum.
We got an early start and decided to take the motorway so that we could get a look at the city today. Jane thinks that she might have seen the bottom of Etna but it was on the wrong side of the van for me to see it and the low cloud prevented positive identification. It was an easy journey into the city and we were greeted at the aire (also a coach park) by a man who explained that the cost was €18 for 24 hours including water, showers and toilets. He also gave us a very badly printed map that showed us that we were next to the museum and he explained that the Archaeological Park was 10 minutes walk and 20 minutes would take us to the old part of the city. Although the aire was more expensive than the campsite that we were going to use, that was more than compensated for by the convenience of the location. The pitches were very pleasant – lots of room and level with plenty of electrical points and taps. The toilet and shower block however were not good and the gents was in a poor state of repair and dirty.
We bought a combined ticket at the museum that also covered the archaeological park and were looking at the exhibits by 11:30. The visiting hours had been extended to cover the whole day (09:00 to 19:00) so we didn't have to rush the visit. The brochure showed four large rooms, A to D with E and F due for completion in 2009. As often happens with Italian (and Greek) museums, some rooms were closed, so we only had rooms B and C and there was no sign of E and F being opened in the near future. It was obvious that they had squeezed in some exhibits from A and D into the open rooms but this was at the expense of some large sculptures.
The museum was well laid out with lots of high quality pottery although surprisingly little in the way of precious metals (plundered by looters or more important museums?). Of particular interest were the many votive offerings from a Greek temple of Demeter. They had found thousands of statues of Demeter buried at the temple and had exhibited a sample of the different styles demonstrating how common each one was by the number exhibited. It was strange to see so many statues lining the display cases and I could imagine the stalls outside the temple - “Come and get your Demeter offerings here! I've got the Goddess on her own or with a torch or with a piglet. For you madam we have a very special model with the torch and piglet and at a very special price!”.
We walked back to Henrietta for lunch and decided not to rush the Archaeological Park (it closed at 16:00), so we walked down to the city. Ortigia is a small island just a few metres off the mainland and now joined to it by three separate bridges. Because of its defensive qualities and an abundance of fresh springs, this was the site of ancient Syracuse and the second place in Sicily to be colonised by Corithian Greeks in 733 BC. This was just one year after pioneers from Naxos landed further north on the east coast and, with little originality, named their new city Naxos. Crossing over to the island we were soon greeted by the ruins of a large temple to Apollo, part of which was once used as a church.
The highlight of the visit to Ortigia was the Duomo, not just another ornate Italian church but a very important archaeological site. The Piazza Duomo is lovely in itself, surrounded by beautiful 17th and 18th century buildings but the Duomo dominates the square. An ornate Baroque façade replaced the Norman one that collapsed during the 1693 earthquake. Inside there is also a Norman stone font but the history of the building goes back much further. The building started life as a temple to Athena in the early 6th century BC, famous throughout the Greek world due to the opulence of its decoration. The doors were made of ivory and gold and the walls painted with military scenes and portraits of the tyrants of Syracuse – claimed to be the earliest example of portraiture in Europe. During the Roman period it was converted into a Christian church and this ensured its survival. Viewed from the Via Minerva the Doric columns can be seen in their original positions forming part of the structure of the church. Inside it is even clearer with the columns lining the aisles on either side and some of the wall of the temple cella (the holiest part) still in position. On the western side, the columns are misaligned and sections have shifted by a few centimetres, showing how close the structure came to collapse in the 1693 earthquake.
The other piazzas of the island are quite pretty but the most interesting parts of the town are definitely the warren of narrow streets full of interesting architecture of many ages and styles. Ortigia is very much lived in rather than being a tourist town and many of the families are obviously poor, squeezed into tiny terraced houses. But everywhere there were narrow alleys and arches leading to tiny open squares where the owners grew flowers in pots under the towering walls of the encroaching houses. I would thoroughly recommend a visit to Ortigia we spent a very pleasant afternoon there and didn't get back to the van until 18:45.
Photos: The Temple of Apollo; The outside of the Duomo with the Doric columns and Norman battlements clearly visible; The columns lining the inside of the eastern isle; A typical Ortigia street; The security was tight at Parcheggio Von Platen – the searchlights were used at night and the guards carried sub-machine guns! There were three of these lookouts around the edge of the parking and it does make one wonder why they thought that they needed them.
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