Last night was relatively relaxing—we had a nice dinner, no Franco Surprise after dinner, so I took a long shower (which apparently had rust in the pipes...I was little disturbed by the brownish water flooding down the drain for the first five minutes) and was in bed by 9:45. Aside from basically sleepwalking to the door to let my last roommate in (we were in a triple) at around 11:00, I slept like the dead until 5:00, when for some inexplicable reason the phone started ringing. We thought it was a wakeup call at first—but it wouldn’t stop ringing. Leaving it off the hook just changed the noise to a loud dial tone, so there was a brief scramble to unplug the phone, and we all promptly fell back asleep until our real wakeup time at 7:00 (thankfully my roommates both set their own alarms). Apparently the mysterious ringing happened to almost every room—none of us knows why it happened, but we survived it :)
We drove a short distance and then walked to Ortygia Island, a tiny little island off the southern point of Sicily. We saw the Spring of Arethusa, which is remarkable as a freshwater spring that happens to be situated only a few meters from the coastline. This sort of phenomenon was fascinating to the ancient Romans, so naturally there's a myth about it. In as short a summary as I'm capable of: Arethusa was a water nymph and a follower of Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt. The river god Alpheus (a river in Greece) fell in love with her and when she rejected him because she wanted to remain a faithful follower of Artemis, he pursued her until she transformed into water and fled through a crack in the ground to Ortygia Island, becoming a freshwater spring.
From there, we made our way to a Baroque cathedral (supposedly the oldest Christian church in Europe) that had been built up around a temple to Athena, so many of the original columns and the cella (temple interior) walls were still visible and in use. I’m always somewhat conflicted about Church appropriation of ancient temples and sanctuaries. On the one hand, these structures likely would not have survived to the present day without that repurposing. On the other hand, they destroy a lot of the most fascinating elements of the temples, so argh!
We then moved on to the remains of the Temple to Apollo, which has an inscription with an extremely rare example of a digamma, a mostly lost Greek letter. I have never taken Greek, so unfortunately I’m not the person to explain it, but even just from a linguistic standpoint it’s very cool. We were in a bit of a rush, so while I pulled out the binoculars, I’m not certain I found the actual letter, and thus have no pictures of it. But the rest of the temple is quite pretty. Incidentally, it's also the earliest Doric temple in Sicily, from somewhere around 600 BCE.
After visiting the temple, we made our way back to the bus through a local marketplace, which had tons of fresh fruit, nuts, cheeses, and fish. I ducked inside a small shop and found a bar of dark chocolate with sea salt in it—the Italians really mean it when they call something dark chocolate—it’s 70% cocoa, and it’s one of the richest chocolate bars I’ve ever had. Next was a trip to a clump of sites (and thus more tourists...boo) in a small park that included a huge altar, a Greek theater, a Roman amphitheater, and ancient stone quarries. Our first stop was at the Altar of Hieron II, one of the tyrants of Syracuse. A brief note for those unfamiliar with Greek history—the negative connotation of the word tyrant is a relatively modern one, in Greek times it simply referred to a single person with full ruling power. Hieron II was in fact quite well-loved by his subjects, and helped to make Syracuse a major power in its time. Anyway, this altar is to Zeus Elutherios (the Liberator), and is the largest altar found in Magna Graecia—it’s 106 m long and 11 m wide.
The Greek theater was a short walk away and was simply spectacular. A Roman theater tends to be built up from the ground anywhere they decided it would be nice to have a theater, while a Greek theater would be built into a hillside, utilizing the natural slope of the hill to create the seating. The theater at Taormina is an odd blend of the two styles of seating, but this is a primarily Greek theater (the Romans did come in and make adaptations later, but the seating remains the same), so there are huge sections of seating cut straight out of the natural limestone hillside.
The theater, from near the top of the seating, with lots of people scattered around to give you perspective. You can also see how it grows up the side of the hill.
The whole theater, along with the beautiful view behind the stage. It's very difficult to get high enough to get an overall view like this, but absolutely worth it.
At the top of the hill, cut into another large chunk of rock, were some shaded areas to sit and relax (Greek theater was an all-day affair in the sun, so the patrons would want a shaded place to sit during the breaks between the plays), including a Museion—a small shrine dedicated to the Greek Muses. It was in a small cave with a beautiful gushing waterfall (from a nearby aqueduct), and a fantastic view nearby of the entire theater.
At the top of the hill, cut into another large chunk of rock, were some shaded areas to sit and relax (Greek theater was an all-day affair in the sun, so the patrons would want a shaded place to sit during the breaks between the plays), including a Museion—a small shrine dedicated to the Greek Muses. It was in a small cave with a beautiful gushing waterfall (from a nearby aqueduct), and a fantastic view nearby of the entire theater.
After the theater, we made our way to the nearby limestone quarries, which are huge. The acoustics are also spectacular, so naturally everyone stood inside and yelled or clapped or made random noises to hear them echo throughout the caves.
Our last stop in the little park was at another small Roman amphitheater, which we sadly could not go down into, but we had some nice views from the outside ring. We were already half an hour late for lunch at this point, so we sort of rushed through it so we could get back to the hotel and eat before it got any later.
After lunch, our last visit was to the Castle of Euryalus, which is the modern name and a bit of a misnomer. More accurately, it’s a nearly impregnable fortress situated on a critical ridge, and in its final phase it had defenses designed by the mathematician Archimedes (some of which are incomplete, as the fortress fell and he died before they could be completed). Even in its current ruined state, it’s a forbidding area—the walls that remain are thick and made of huge blocks of limestone, there are mazes of tunnels underneath, and the whole thing is essentially on a top of a hill with nothing but flat fields for miles in every direction. It was an incredibly important part of the defense of Syracuse, and stopped the Romans in their tracks for quite a long time until they managed to trick their way past it. In all its history, it never once fell to a siege.
The stairs down to one of the aforementioned tunnels. Yes, I went running around in the tunnels (I mean, duh), but the photos didn't come out very well. Eventually they dragged us out of the ruins to get back on the bus, where I'm writing this on our way to the hotel for the night, in Piazza Armerina. There's not much to see in them--they're just long tunnels cut straight out of the rock, but it was fun to go in one and randomly come out somewhere completely different. I keep having to check our schedule to remember what on Earth I’ve done in the past ten hours!
(Later at the hotel, getting ready for bed) We just had what I think has been my best meal in Italy, and definitely ranking in the top meals of my life. There was spectacular lasagna and rosemary chicken and oven roasted potatoes and little almond cookies for dessert, and it was all YUM. This isn't really relevant to anything, I'm just gloating :)
No comments:
Post a Comment