On Thursday we awoke to the crash of thunder. The lights in the agriturismo went on, off, on again. It poured for a while, and we decided to go without our swim. The day's plan, thanks to my weather ap's foresight, was the city of Siracusa, where many of the sights were indoors.
We made it to Siracusa with little trouble. I am actually not bad with a road map, though I have some trouble with right and left (seriously aggravated in a car like the one in Malta with the steering wheel on the wrong side. Just ask Phil. No, don't).
The rain had ended, so our first stop was the Latomie, a quarry and group of caves where the Siracusans dug the stone with which they built their city, and where the Greek tyrant Dionysius imprisoned his foes.
Nearby was the fifth-century b.c. Greek theatre, where many of the great ancient playwrights, including Aeschylus, premiered their work. The plays are still performed there each year, but we were too late for the season. Still, wandering about with very few other tourists, it wasn't hard to imagine the seats full and the stage populated with actors speaking lines from the Oresteia in the original.
Under a lowering sky, we walked to the Archeological Museum, one of the great collections of classical antiquities in the world. We visited several rooms filled with marvels of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, and artifacts from far earlier times as well. Phil found an urn that he felt evoked the scenes on the one Keats described in his ode, and I was taken by a group of rather creepy statuary faces. There was also a statue of Priapus, strangely missing his defining limb.
Near the museum were the Catacombs of S. Giovanni Evangelista, a series of hundreds of rooms where early Christians buried their dead and met to worship. As the guide took us through, I wondered what those religious services, in the midst of hundreds of decaying bodies, must have smelled like. Among the stranger sights was a stone coffin with three holes bored in the lid, through which mourning relatives funneled milk, honey, and oil into the mouth of the mouldering deceased.
Phil had wanted to see the small fishing village of Aci Trezza, just south of our agriturismo. It's the setting for a film he loves and teaches, La Terra Trema, a lyrical socialist epic and folk tragedy. I directed us there more or less successfully, and we arrived at what are called the Cyclops Rocks as
the daylight waned, the waves battered the shore, and the church bells rang a foul weather warning -- almost exactly duplicating a scene from the Visconti film. Phil was thrilled. And our dinner, at a seafood place across the piazza from the rocks, was delicious, featuring the strangest seafood dish of the trip: sea urchin roe pasta.
The Cyclops Rocks -- in fact, the whole series of villages known as the Cyclops Riviera -- are so named from the episode in The Odyssey. The Cyclops reputedly lived on a nearby island, and when Odysseus landed there, the one-eyed monster ate most of his men.
Odysseus managed to blind the Cyclops and escape from his island, and in his fury the Cyclops threw enormous rocks at him -- but missed, of course. These rocks are the ones that jut from the waves at Aci Trezza.
When we returned to the agriturismo, we indulged in our nightly ritual: drinking a strange local liqueur (a different one each night) as we sat outside looking over the sea. This night, we got to see a show of heat lightning flashing over the water as we sipped.
Our last full day in Sicily was devoted to the astonishing Greek ruins in the Valley of Temples at Agrigento, in the south of the island. It's hard to do them justice in a description, but the camera behaved, so I hope you can get a sense of their magnificence from our photos.
We stopped at another of the towns on the Cyclops Riviera, Aci Castello, for dinner, and were surprised by the castello of the name, a Norman castle that perched on the edge of coast and loomed over the town. We hadn't realized that the Normans conquered Sicily after taking Britain -- but it took them thirty years, not one. Completely understandable.
Our last meal, at the town square, was as amazing as all the others had been.
On Saturday we had several hours before we had to drop off the car, so we said a sad farewell to Tenuta Santa Tecla and headed to the town of Caltagirone, known for two things: its ceramics, and an incredible seventeenth-century tiled stairway called Santa Maria del Monte Stairs. We climbed the stairs, which were gorgeous, and bought ceramics. In general though, we found the town less 
welcoming than other places we'd visited -- probably because it was less focused on tourism, and possibly also because it's near Gela, reputed to be a hotbed of Mafia activity.
Our final stop (are you tired yet? Imagine my feet) was Piazza Armerina. This town is known for one particular attraction -- the Villa del Casale, a third-century Roman country estate. It was NOT easy to find, but the struggle was worthwhile. The floors are inlaid with spectacular mosaics, almost perfectly preserved because a flood buried them in mud in the twelfth century.
Each of the dozens of rooms has a mosaic floor, featuring scenes of hunting, children playing (or massacring rabbits) and animals being herded onto an arklike ship. The best-known mosaics are called The Female Gymnasts in Bikinis, 
and have caused us to rethink our attitudes about the inclusion of beach volleyball in the Olympics.
I won't describe the return of the injured car, except to say that the experience involved a great many mosquitoes and an attendant who spoke not a word of English. Nor will I describe the trip back except to say that the hallways in Gatwick Airport are far longer than they need to be. But we're safely ensconced in Hatton Garden, and looking forward to resuming the pub crawl.
Goethe called Sicily "the key to everything," and even after just six days there, I can see what he meant. We are already missing the sunlight, the Greek/Roman/medieval/baroque sites, the kind people, and the fabulous food.
We are not missing the driving.
The rain had ended, so our first stop was the Latomie, a quarry and group of caves where the Siracusans dug the stone with which they built their city, and where the Greek tyrant Dionysius imprisoned his foes. 
Nearby was the fifth-century b.c. Greek theatre, where many of the great ancient playwrights, including Aeschylus, premiered their work. The plays are still performed there each year, but we were too late for the season. Still, wandering about with very few other tourists, it wasn't hard to imagine the seats full and the stage populated with actors speaking lines from the Oresteia in the original.
Under a lowering sky, we walked to the Archeological Museum, one of the great collections of classical antiquities in the world. We visited several rooms filled with marvels of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, and artifacts from far earlier times as well. Phil found an urn that he felt evoked the scenes on the one Keats described in his ode, and I was taken by a group of rather creepy statuary faces. There was also a statue of Priapus, strangely missing his defining limb.Near the museum were the Catacombs of S. Giovanni Evangelista, a series of hundreds of rooms where early Christians buried their dead and met to worship. As the guide took us through, I wondered what those religious services, in the midst of hundreds of decaying bodies, must have smelled like. Among the stranger sights was a stone coffin with three holes bored in the lid, through which mourning relatives funneled milk, honey, and oil into the mouth of the mouldering deceased.
Phil had wanted to see the small fishing village of Aci Trezza, just south of our agriturismo. It's the setting for a film he loves and teaches, La Terra Trema, a lyrical socialist epic and folk tragedy. I directed us there more or less successfully, and we arrived at what are called the Cyclops Rocks as
The Cyclops Rocks -- in fact, the whole series of villages known as the Cyclops Riviera -- are so named from the episode in The Odyssey. The Cyclops reputedly lived on a nearby island, and when Odysseus landed there, the one-eyed monster ate most of his men.
Odysseus managed to blind the Cyclops and escape from his island, and in his fury the Cyclops threw enormous rocks at him -- but missed, of course. These rocks are the ones that jut from the waves at Aci Trezza.
When we returned to the agriturismo, we indulged in our nightly ritual: drinking a strange local liqueur (a different one each night) as we sat outside looking over the sea. This night, we got to see a show of heat lightning flashing over the water as we sipped.
Our last full day in Sicily was devoted to the astonishing Greek ruins in the Valley of Temples at Agrigento, in the south of the island. It's hard to do them justice in a description, but the camera behaved, so I hope you can get a sense of their magnificence from our photos.
 |
| the temple of Hera |
 |
| the temple of Concord |
 |
| the temple of Hercules |
We stopped at another of the towns on the Cyclops Riviera, Aci Castello, for dinner, and were surprised by the castello of the name, a Norman castle that perched on the edge of coast and loomed over the town. We hadn't realized that the Normans conquered Sicily after taking Britain -- but it took them thirty years, not one. Completely understandable.Our last meal, at the town square, was as amazing as all the others had been.
On Saturday we had several hours before we had to drop off the car, so we said a sad farewell to Tenuta Santa Tecla and headed to the town of Caltagirone, known for two things: its ceramics, and an incredible seventeenth-century tiled stairway called Santa Maria del Monte Stairs. We climbed the stairs, which were gorgeous, and bought ceramics. In general though, we found the town less 
welcoming than other places we'd visited -- probably because it was less focused on tourism, and possibly also because it's near Gela, reputed to be a hotbed of Mafia activity.Our final stop (are you tired yet? Imagine my feet) was Piazza Armerina. This town is known for one particular attraction -- the Villa del Casale, a third-century Roman country estate. It was NOT easy to find, but the struggle was worthwhile. The floors are inlaid with spectacular mosaics, almost perfectly preserved because a flood buried them in mud in the twelfth century.
Each of the dozens of rooms has a mosaic floor, featuring scenes of hunting, children playing (or massacring rabbits) and animals being herded onto an arklike ship. The best-known mosaics are called The Female Gymnasts in Bikinis, 
and have caused us to rethink our attitudes about the inclusion of beach volleyball in the Olympics. I won't describe the return of the injured car, except to say that the experience involved a great many mosquitoes and an attendant who spoke not a word of English. Nor will I describe the trip back except to say that the hallways in Gatwick Airport are far longer than they need to be. But we're safely ensconced in Hatton Garden, and looking forward to resuming the pub crawl.
We are not missing the driving.
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