We just spent 4 days in an airBnB right in the old town of Syracuse. It was actually on the island of Ortigia which is where the pedestrian zone old town is. 2 bridges connect it to the mainland which is where the ancient ancient part of the city was. Syracuse used to be a major city in ancient Greek times and then in Roman times and it has quite a few ruins that we saw in the archeological museum and then in the archeology park on another day. Syracuse used to be one of the biggest cities in Greece and the world…
One of the major sites was the Duomo (cathedral). It had a greek temple that got turned into a roman temple that got turned into a mosque and eventually got turned into a Baroque cathedral. ( I may have missed some steps there… but the point is that it was an old building that kept getting messed with)
Besides fancy churches, the town had a fort/castle that we toured on one day. It protected a large harbor and is in the middle of getting some restorations but we saw most of it. They had a small museum that showed some of the first hand grenades. They were ceramic balls filled with gunpowder that looked like pomegranates. Which is why we call they called them grenades….
We have also been eating a lot of food :>). A lot of pizza… A lot of pasta… A lot of seafood… A lot of gelato… and a lot of Cannoli. We are determined to find the best Cannoli in Sicily and are trying it in every city. Cannoli needs a good hard fried shell filled with real sheep’s milk ricotta and then topped with pistachios, chocolate chips, and then garnished with a cherry or candied lemon or orange peel.
On our trip to the archeological museum we had to stop and see the famous crying Mary relief (kind of like a painting crossed with a sculpture). In 1953 a blind lady had a Mary 3D sculpture that cried real tears for 3 days. The lady touched the tears and was then able to see so the Vatican sent their experts to check it out. They declared it a miracle and now there is a big party every August to celebrate. They eventually built a fancy modern church around it in 1994 that the Pope visited. It doesn’t look like any other Italian church we have seen. We have seen a lot of Italian churches by the way….
It was also another huge archeological museum with a lot of Greek and Roman and even older stuff. I will spare you all the old stuff pictures except for my head on a statue that I have always wanted to do just like old cartoons (maybe Peabody and Sherman??)
The actual ruins had a lot better photo ops. It was a huge old rock quarry that provided limestone for a lot of Greek and then Roman structures. It is now filled with a lot of cactus and trees that make it into a really cool garden. It also had another big Roman amphitheater and a Greek theater.
The next leg of our journey will be in a car across the bottom of the island of Sicily through the town of Agrigento to see some more Greek ruins and some more Roman ruins on the way…