Gem of Sicily--Siracusa

Siracusa's Piazza Duomo at dusk

Once the capital of ancient Greece, Siracusa calls itself the Greek part of Sicily.  It is a small city of about 75,000 inhabitants, with a wonderful city center on the island of Ortigia, where the Greeks formed their first town.  The nearby archaeological site is Greek and Roman, with a huge quarry which is the source of the beautiful limestone blocks that were used to build the temples, theaters and major buildings of the Greek and Roman eras.  Later the Spanish removed the stones to build their own structures.

Looking across bay at new areas of Siracusa

late Baroque palace in Piazza Duomo

Ortigia is a short distance from the mainland, maybe 100 yards, and is still the heart of Siracusa.  We stayed in this wonderful area, crammed with tiny alleys, too many cars trying to find a place to park, beautiful neo-classical and late Baroque buildings, people strolling through the piazzas and streets, and the magnificent Piazza Duomo, site of Siracusa’s remarkable cathedral.

outer wall of cathedral, built between Greek columns

The cathedral was first a Greek temple, then a Byzantine church, next a mosque, and later a Norman church.  Greek temples had the huge columns we are used to seeing, supporting long open arcades, with a building inside where only the priests were allowed to enter to worship the gods.  The Byzantines filled in the spaces between the huge columns of the Greek temple with walls for their church.  They carved archways into the walls of the inner temple to create side naves.  Normans added onto the structure with their own arches high above the floor of the church.  The church walls are probably what saved the cathedral from collapse in earthquakes. 

Greek columns incorporated into cathedral

So, today, you can see the wonderful Doric Greek columns in the walls of the cathedral, holding up the Renaissance roof, with gorgeous Byzantine arches dividing the spaces and Norman windows above it all.  This cathedral represents Sicily’s history of conquest and civilization.  Nearby, in a lovely neo-classical former convent, the archbishop reigns over the declining number of faithful people.

Greek quarry with caves cut by slaves

The quarry in Siracusa’s archaeological park provides a story of ingenuity and sadness.  The ingenuity of the Greeks in extracting and moving the enormous stones, not to mention actually carving them perfectly and putting them into place, is remarkable.  But, the sadness of a place where so many thousands of prisoners and slaves worked themselves to death under the most horrific conditions is beyond imagining.  It permeates the caves where they were forced to live and work and the beautiful garden that now fills the valley they made with their labor.

Dionysus ear, cave cut for quarry

The Greeks looked for water courses in the limestone, where the stone was softer.  They began their excavations of the quarry downward from there, eventually creating a series of large caves.  To cut out the blocks of stone, they drilled holes into the rock, pounded wood into the holes, then filled them with water.  When the wood expanded with the water, it caused big cracks in the rock which then could be broken off in giant blocks of stone.  These stones were carefully chiseled so that each one fit perfectly with the ones above, below and to each side, and hauled to the construction site by oxcarts on stone wheels (or, I’m sure, often by hundreds of slaves).

sole remaining column that supported the rock "roof" covering

the quarry, with remains of farmhouse on the top

Until the 1693 earthquake, famous in Sicily for its massive destruction, the quarry was roofed over with solid rock, held up by huge columns of limestone left by the Greeks to support the rock roof.  Farmers continued to live and farm on the limestone “roof” until it collapsed in the earthquake.  The lone remaining column still has the remnants of a farmhouse on its narrow top.

One of the enormous caves created by the excavations is called Dionysus Ear because it is shaped a bit like an ear, but mainly because this tyrannical ruler was reported to have listened in on the conversations of slaves working below from a tunnel near the top of the cave.  He wanted to know about the plots against him so he could eliminate them and their plotters before they came to fruition.

looking to the Mediterranean from the Greek theater,

being prepared for the summer season of Greek plays

Nearby is the Greek theater, now being prepared for the summer season of Greek plays performed here.  So, it’s not the time to see the beauty of the theater, but its shape, a hemisphere that overlooked the Mediterranean in ancient days, is a work of art. 

Roman amphitheater

Later, the Romans built an enormous altar, where reportedly 400 bulls could be sacrificed at once (the meat then cooked and distributed to the masses watching the slaughter).  And next to that, one of the largest coliseums in the Roman world where blood also flowed in contests of men against men and men against animals.  When the Byzantines arrived, they put a stop to the bloodfests, but were not necessarily any less cruel themselves, all in the name of religion.