Thursday May 11, 2006

Holiday in Sicily - Siracusa

A drive down South past Catania had us stay in Siracusa which was once the most important city in the Western world. Our hotel was to be the hotel Villa Politi and by its side was one of the many quarries used to extract the stones for the buildings. Its old centre an island called Ortygia is reached by a short road bridge. On this small piece of land are packed in a very diverse set of buildings and monuments to see. On the first day we wandered around Ortygia looking at them. Sadly the Duomo was covered in scaffolding and there is a lot of much needed renovations going on which in some areas can be oppresive. This is the Piazza with the Duomo not shown.

A lovely Piazza dedicated to Archimedes who did his bit to stop the Roman's taking over the city but when they finaly did he has was hacked to death by them. It has two theatres; one Roman and a largerGreek one. I Preferred the smaller and both are used for performances still.

In the centre of the Roman one is a tank used to collect the blood and gore from the events held in it. Ill and infirm people were said to drink this in the hope it would make them better. An early form of blood transfusion perhaps. We also visited the quarry by both of these theatres where an ear shaped slit in the rock called Orecchio di Dionisio (ear of Dionysuis) iside this large cave were lots of children testing its sound enhancing ability - and deafening everyone else...

Our second day had us drive to Sortino on the way to Pantalica a gorge which has loads of tombs cut into the rock. However in Sortino we amused the locals by getting lost and reversing down narrow streets in our attempts to extracate ourselves from the place. Back to Pantalica our walk took us down to the river at the bottom of the gorge but on the way we saw hundreds if not thousands of the tombs all cut out of the rock.

Again there were lots of flowers on show and birds singing - the only sound (apart from the running water) breaking the silence of this spooky place.

The last day we were to drive to nearby Noto but the hire car failed to start so we elected to have another day in the town. We strolled around a small park that surrounds the ugly santuario della Madonna dell Lassime built to house the statue of the Madonna that is said to have wept for five days in 1953. The nearby catacombes were then open so we took a tour into them. On top of them is this pretty church.

The catacombes are in fact an old Roman water system made unusable by an earthquake. Depending on your wealth your bones were crambed into a small rectangular slit in the rock, a proper body sized hole with a lid or a cave with frescoes and other decorations. Some of these were still visible. Our last morning we visited the Museo del Papiro - a papyrus museum which had both modern and ancient examples of the uses of this plant. There is still in fact a modern papyrus industry in the town.

So in summary a great week away on his island, avoid the heat of summer it gets very crowded and the heat will be opressive. The locals are very friendly out of the tourist areas even more so. Public areas like bars/restuarants have a no smoking policy which is good and the local wines and beers are very quaffable. Treats to take home; the sweet wine Marsalla made on the island, sweets made from marzipan and shaped into fruits and coloured accordingly which are available everywhere but called frutta di martorana in Palermo ( the islands capital) and finally excellent marmalade especially the mandarin one.