The sea, and home

The next day was our last of touring and we had to drive to a seaside hotel in Acireale. Just outside Siracusa we stopped at the ancient Greek fort of Castello Euryalo. It was the protection of Syracuse on the landward side. Syracuse is very roughly in the shape of a triangle with two very long sides and a short one along the sea. The Tyrant Dionysos built huge walls along ridges and this fort was the euryalos  - the head of the nail. It was terrifically impressive, with huge blocks and a deep moat carved from the rock, and yards and yards and yards of underground tunnels, again carved out of the rock, leading to sally ports, so men could rush out in large numbers from a number of concealed exits, as at Selinunte. 

Euryalos

Entrance to one of the tunnels.

The moat and supports for the drawbridge.

These tunnels were so extensive and so atmospheric we were both glad not to be alone - we couldn't help thinking of the Minotaur. We managed to find our way out without too much difficulty though. The fortifications are said to have been designed by Archimedes. Certainly there was an impressive ingenuity and engineering skill. But it fell to the Romans without even putting up a fight. Perhaps the Greeks felt there was no hope of fighting the Romans. But the Romans overwhelmed Greek culture. They used the Greek theatres for gladiatorial spectacles. There were two rebellions against Roman rule, which ended in massacres.

Our last hotel is dead posh (it's not a hotel, it's a Palace) with a lovely big seawater infinity swimming pool. 

The seaside here is the point at which one of Etna's lava flows met the sea, so it's all black rocks, and you can see how each wave of lava curled over the previous one. There is a little stony beach just a little down the road and this I have been down to it for a sea swim, because sea swimming is glorious. The hotel had an arrangement to swim off the rocks but it seems to have collapsed, and the sea is quite choppy for the Mediterranean, so getting in and out of the sea off the rocks could be dangerous. There are shoals of small silver fish (sardines, maybe). But the pool is also very nice, and nicer to sit around than on the beach. The hotel is not too busy although there is a convention of hairdressers in for tonight and tomorrow. The women favour the most hideous shoes -high platforms with turned up soles, and very high chunky heels, which make their feet the most obvious thing about them.

 

The view from our room

Late in the day there was a thunderstorm with dramatic flashes of lightning over the sea. It's really hot so we rather welcomed the rain than otherwise.

Although the couple of days in Acireale were for a rest, we did venture to Taormina for a day. It's busier than where we are. We liked the little island, Isola Bella, and the beach there. 

On Isola Bella

We met old friends for lunch - a little while ago, we discovered that we were all going to Sicily and would overlap for a day or two. It was very enjoyable, if slightly odd, meeting somewhere so relatively exotic. Phil took pleasure in pointing out that I have known Yvonne for more than fifty years, which made me feel ancient!

The journey home was fairly uneventful. The ground handlers at Catania loaded us onto buses three quarters of an hour early - before the plane even landed. We have complained, because anyone who left a dog locked in a car in that heat would be prosecuted. But when we got back to England, much as I like to look down  and see all the green fields, I have to admit it was freezing. 

Agrigento and Syracuse

We stayed in another agriturismo B&B at Agrigento. I had a nice dip in the small pool, but apart from the pool this was more of a proper country villa than the previous place. There were lots of hens, a couple of dogs, one large, one small, peacocks, and in the morning we were woken, first by the doves on the roof over our heads, and then by something emitting tremendous honks like someone having fun with a tuba. In the evening, we could see the temples across a dip on the ridge illuminated. It was quite a sight.

 

The temples from our B&B 

It was another really good breakfast with fresh smoothies and bread, which while solid, was tasty.

Agrigento is a massive site, so we concentrated on the temples, and although there are some interesting churches in the town proper, we had had enough of the traffic yesterday, and decided to give them a miss. The drive was harder than expected, because the viaduct is closed - some of the supports are unsafe. This keeps happening, and sometimes tunnels are closed. We are then sent on long detour through difficult roads. They are unsafe under normal conditions, and bear in mind that this is an earthquake area. I believe the shoddy workmanship is mafia related. 

The main sight at Agrigento is the Temple of Concord. It's the one whose front is used as the badge for UNESCO  World Heritage sites. It survived becaus it was turned into a church, and also because it is on a bed of clay which acted as a shock absorber in the earthquake that brought down the other temples. It's thought that the builders knew this.

Temple of Concord (not the original dedication.)

It was pretty hot and not much shade, and both Phil and I were amused by the way experienced guides crowded their groups into what shade there was before embarking on the lecture. It made us sad, too, remembering our guide in Syria, Adnan, who seemed to know every patch of shade. Goodness knows what's happened to him. There certainly won't be any western tourists. Mind you, he did tell us how he couldn't stand Shiá muslims. I can't say I was surprised when Syria fell apart - it seemed a really unhappy country when we were there. And remembering  all that depressed us more than ever, because I recited "Ozymandias" on the stage at Palmyra Roman theatre to test the acoustics, and apparently it's now being used for executions.

The museum was wonderfully cool and had some red figure and black figure Greek vases of superb quality and one or two excellent sculptures. It also had a reproduction of one of the telamons from the Temple of Zeus, erected so one could properly appreciate its gigantic proportions.

Then we had a good meal quite close to the temple site; the restaurant was patronised by many local business people which is always a good sign. We set off to drive all the way to Siracusa. For all the reasons I've mentioned it was quite tiring and we were very glad to reach the hotel, which is a modern business type hotel although since it is French owned, a French bus tour is here.

Breakfast was really good - there was a ricotta tart which Phil actually sampled and a choice of almond, coffee, or lemon granita, on top of all he more expected stuff.. We are down to two meals a day, the breakfasts are so good.

It was a short walk to the main archaeological site. The Roman amphitheatre is closed, and so is the early church, but you can see the large cistern under the church, which stored water for cleaning or flooding the amphitheatre.

There is a simply vast altar on which well over a hundred oxen could be sacrificed at one time.

The Greek theatre is really terrific and one can't help be impressed to think that it showed the first production of Aeschylus' plays, and Plato and Archimedes attended plays in this very theatre. There are three plays showing at present  - Iphigenia in Aulus, The Supplicants and Medea. We did think of going but it's The Supplicants the night we are here, which we don't know, and of course they are performed in Italian. So we decided against it. But the theatre was so evocative and the setting so dramatic that we started to regret it, although we know that after we have walked all around Syracuse, we'll be too tired to enjoy a play while sitting on backless stone seats.

The sacred spring.

The Nymphaeum with niches for offerings around it.

There is a very impressive fountain at the top of the theatre. The Greeks and later the Romans seem to have made use of numerous springs coming through faults in the rock from miles away in the hills. 

Later, on Ortigia, the island end of Syracuse, we saw the spring of Arethusa, named after one of Artemis' followers who was turned into a spring in an attempt to shake off an importunate lover. It's in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Nelson's fleet watered at this spring on its way to beat the French at the battle of the Nile. It's very pretty, in spite of the Italian blindness to litter, with a large clump of papyrus in the basin, ducks and carp. In a couple of steps is the sea. No wonder the site appealed to the Greeks.

The fountain of Arethusa

The stone quarries are well worth seeing - they have turned into gardens full of lemon trees, acanthus, baobabs and edible figs, oleander and bougainvillea. They are lovely to wander through, marveling at the size of the caverns and blocks which have been removed, and being careful not to think too hard about the 7000 Athenian prisoners of war, who died here of heat and starvation. There are lots of tombs cut into the rock - one is said to be that of Archimedes. It obviously isn't, but it's a nice walk.                 

 

The quarries - Dionysos' ear - named
By Caravaggio because of its shape,
and because he believed the Tyrant used
its strange acoustics to listen in on people.

We had a look at a modern church, built because in 1953 a statue of the virgin is alleged to have started to weep. This was followed by miracle cures. It's round, like the RC cathedral in Liverpool, known as Paddy's Wigwam, although the altar is not in the centre, but to one side. It's nice though  -not overdecorated, and the architecture is allowed to speak for itself.

Then we wandered along the sea front and around Ortigia, the island at the very tip. There are many restored palazzi and a few crumbling ones. The Duomo is completely amazing. It took over the temple of Athena, dated fourth century B.C.,  and although a baroque front has been stuck on, you can see the original Doric pillars built into the walls, where the peristyle was simply bricked up.

It was very exciting to think we'd actually been in a Greek temple.

The fortress at the tip of Ortigia

We had a superb lunch late and, very full indeed, waddled back to the hotel to collapse.

Monreale, Segesta and Selinunte

Monreale is later than the Palatine Chapel, but a similar Norman-Arab style with Byzantine mosaics, although probably the mosaic artists were Sicilian, presumably trained by artists from Byzantium. 

We were a bit discouraged by the number of tour buses in the car park, but it turned out that there was a special service for women from all over Sicily, and so the tour buses had had to arrive early before the church service started. We got a whole hour to study the church, so although we had to share the church with the bus tours, we were lucky that we had arrived early. The mosaics are wonderful. We particularly liked the story of the conversion of Paul, with the scene on the road to Damascus and then Paul being baptised by Ananais, because the details were lovely and, I think, since we actually went to the house of Ananias in Damascus, and it seemed quite personal.

The bronze doors, designed by the architect
Who designed the leaning tower of
Pisa. Not sure that's a recommendation.

 

Christ Pantocrator in the apse

We went up the roof terraces, where the views down into the cloisters and across the Conca dÓro (the horn of plenty) to Palermo and the sea were terrific, even though the Conca dÓro, the wonderfully fertile land that helped to make Palermo rich, is almost entirely covered in buildings. The cloisters are fascinating- we spent ages looking at the carved capitals, which were wonderfully lively and varied. We circumnavigated the exterior of the church, which has elaborate Arab style decorations on the Gothic style building.

Arab decorations

The cloisters

Cloister capital 

Then we drove to Segesta. Driving through towns is fraught because double and triple parking is common, even though the streets aren't that wide to start with. But on the whole the driving is less aggressive than in northern Italy and some people pootle along so slowly that even we, strangers and happy to have longer to check directions, get frustrated. One does get fed up of protecting idiots on scooters or motorbikes from their own stupidity.

Segesta has a very complete temple peristyle; it may never have been completed because there is no evidence of a cella  (the inside room or rooms). Or it may have been dedicated to some unusual cult, but the dates seem too early. At the top of the hill is the main part of the town with an evocative theatre. It's Greek style, without the back wall favoured by the Romans and so behind the stage is a wonderful view over the mountains and to  the sea.

 

The temple, Segesta

We stayed the night at an Agriturismo place ; I can't really describe it as a B&B because it was pretty posh. It did weddings and such. But it was a lovely room and surrounded by olive trees which produce prize winning olive oil. I do like the effect of a pomegranate tree with its small scarlet flowers against the silvery green olives. It had a really smashing swimming pool and I had a brilliant swim both morning and evening. The morning one was bliss, loud with birdsong.

There was a set menu in the evening which was wonderful, a terrific parade of Sicilian delicacies.  The breakfast was really excellent with superb cooked meats and cheeses, the only let down being the bread, which made me think of Terry Pratchett's dwarf bread. The next day Phil bought me a Sicilian cook book which I think may be a very broad hint, but actually I do want to find out how to do the sweet and sour vegetables and the stuffed aubergines and the twice cooked pasta. Maybe not the ricotta sweet pastries, though - I'm beginning to find them cloying. Phil is really enjoying them - he had a doughnut stuffed with sweet ricotta for breakfast. You need an extremely good appetite to eat that.

We chose the agriturismo place as it was close to Selinunte. Selinunte was a large Greek city which called in the Phoenicians to help them with their struggle for dominance with Segesta.  Bad move - it was sacked by Hannibal.

There is one enormous temple which was never completed thanks to the Carthaginians, and in the nearby quarry you can see columns which were being cut ready for the building. An earthquake brought the temples down and one is huge. The Sicilian Greeks seemed to value size, maybe over artistry. 

Another temple, to Hera, dating from the fifth century BC, was re-erected in 1957 and is still being worked on

The temple of Hera, Selinunte

The fortifications were enormous but mostly built after the sacking. Whole areas of the old town had been abandoned and the stone used to improve the walls. There were columns from a temple which had been sawn in half lengthways to strengthen the walls, which had tunnels through and along them, and these ended in a series of disguised sally ports eight in a line, so that a large number of soldiers could emerge more or less simultaneously, rather than one at a time, when they could be much more easily overwhelmed.  The two main streets have been excavated and one can see wheel tracks.

There weren't that many other tourists. Its a large site, so we drove from one bit to the other.  Touts were trying to sell rides in golf buggies but that wasn't at all necessary. It would perhaps have been useful to get a ride to the farthest sanctuary, for Demeter, which was about 25 minutes walk each way without much shade. But about half way there was the remains of a Byzantine church with a baptism pool. So that was interesting, and then we crossed the river, which is more of a powerful stream, with thickets of bamboo and oleander and ferns, and loud birdsong, and dragonflies, some of which were scarlet. That was lovely. Then there was no one else at all at the sanctuary, and we much prefer being alone and working out what was what. There were some signs which helped us, and it was all very atmospheric.  Apparently Demeter and her daughter Persephone inspired a great deal of devotion in Sicily.

 

The gateway into the Temenos at the sanctuary.

After the walk back we drove to Lido Marinella and had an excellent buffet lunch. Then, much restored, we drove to Agrigento.

Palermo

This is the third day of our trip to Sicily. We flew to Catania because that's where the cheap flights go to, but Catania seems really grim, what we saw of it anyway. We only stayed long enough to pick up the hire car. It is a Fiat 500 but one of the big four door ones. It drives OK, although it doesn't pull in second gear if there's any sort of a hill, so if forced to go up a hill slowly, because of bends or other traffic, you have crash it into first. it is very ugly. There are still some old proper Fiat 500s on the road, and it's the same problem as the new Mini - it isn't a mini at all. We had a Mini when we first married and it was brilliant fun to drive and ideal round London. The new one is just your ordinary car, and as with our Fiat, when it's inflated into a four door car, it's terrible.

So we had some problems getting on the right road out of Catania, but managed it, and drove across Sicily to Palermo. The scenery is spectacular once in the mountains, although already pretty dry. There was a long diversion onto mountain roads, the first of many, because the viaducts have been badly built and are unsafe. Some of the tunnels are closed too. I suspect it's due to corruption. Clearly Sicily bakes in the summer and I think we're just in time.There are lots of flowers and birdsong, but the sun is very hot. 

The B&B in Palermo was great. It was in the old town in an old house. We were at the top, and the stairs were not absolutley regular - some were higher than others so we had to be a bit careful going up and down. But it was a very nice room and we got an extremely filling breakfast both days, so much so that we have forgone a lunch and settled for fruit. To top breakfast off each day we were given a pastry filled with sweetened ricotta, which sounds nice (and it did taste nice) but was like having eaten a brick. 

 

Looking down the street of our B&B

We settled in and went out for a stroll. Palermo is very run down. There are old houses which are only a facade - the house has completely collapsed behind. And there are plenty of what I suppose to be bomb sites - at least that's what they look like, and Palermo was badly bombed in 1943. But we felt quite safe. I'm sure, as in any city, there are places one shouldn't venture at night, but it's not scary like Naples

There are heaps of dilapidated palazzi. I know in Italy one can't judge the wealth of the inhabitants by the outside of a building, but there are lots of balconies I wouldn't venture out onto. They are alarmingly decrepit.

The next day, after breakfast, we went straight to the Palatine Chapel. 

Part of the ceiling of the Palatine Chapel

Christ Pantocrator (ruler of all)

The B&B is really close so that we beat the crowd and had nearly an hour with just a few other people in there, before the bus trips arrived. I don't know what the rest of the holiday will be like, but the chapel would be worth the journey on its own. It so beautiful that no words of mine or any photos could possibly do it justice. The whole interior has a wonderful golden glow, as the background of all the mosaics is gold.Immediately as you go in you are facing the majestic Christ Pantocrator, every bit is covered with saints, angels, scenes from the life of Christ, scenes from Genesis, and beautiful foliage round the windows. Roger II brought Byzantine mosaic artists to decorate the interior, and there are inscriptions in Latin and Greek. There's also wonderful Arab style decorative, non figurative mosaics, and a superb Arab style carved wooden ceiling. You can make out scenes of hunting and dancing, and there are saints and prophets. It was heavenly.

We looked at the roooms from Roger's palace that can be seen. They are used by the regional assembly, but it doesn't sit on a Monday.It was mildly interesting, the best bit being Roger's loggia, which is the least altered, and an inscription about Roger's handiwork in Arabic, Greek and Latin. That was interesting because the three versions were different when one compared the translations in Italian. They betrayed the cultural conventions of each ethnic group. We also saw inscriptions which added Hebrew to the list of languages. But nothing can compare to the chapel.

Then we walked down to the cathedral, which is on the outside a strange mix of Gothic and Arab and Catalan elements. Inside, the mosaics have gone and it's been baroqued, and was a terrible disappointment. The treasury had Roger's daughter's crown, which was fascinating to see as it was like the ones you see on Byzantine depictions of the emperor - a sort of beanie shape, covered with uncut jewels and with dangling sort of earrings. We liked that, and also the tombs of Roger and his daughter Constanza.

We had a coffee and walked to the Martorana This is a church built by Roger's highly successful admiral, George of Antioch It was quite little, so a bit has been added, but the old church has superb mosaics and Arab decorative art. There's a mosaic of Roger receiving the crown from Christ and one of George prostrating himself before the Virgin. One of the reasons we were keen to come to Sicily was that we read a book called The Ruby in Her Navel by Barry Unsworth, set in twelfth century Sicily, and it was nice to see portraits of these important characters. How lifelike the mosaics are, of course, we can't know. The next door church belongs to the knights of Jerusalem but was closed

George of Antioch and the Virgin

La Martorana

We walked back to the B&B via the market, which was interesting. Phil bought and ate an octopus salad, with lots of lemon juice and parsley. I had a taste and it was very good indeed. Judging by what was on sale, Palermitans live on tuna and snails. I never imagined there could be so many edible snails. Unfortunately neither tuna or snails are items I would choose from a menu. But for dinner we had a couple of Sicilian specialities that I really did enjoy - a stuffed aubergine dish and pasta with fennel and sardines.

We walked miles, because next day we walked to La Zisa.This was Roger's hunting lodge outside the city. To get there we had to walk through a seriously grim bit of Palermo - not Bombay style, but not what one expects in Europe. But La Zisa has been restored and has a show of household objects beautifully made in Arab style, obviously not those belonging to Roger but representing the way the lodge would have been furnished.

La Zisa

The twelfth century chapel next to La Zisa

Then we walked over to Teatro Massima, which unfortunately is dark while we're here, and saw the shopping streets - not as smart and tempting as Florence, which is a good thing as far as I am concerned. We walked down to the harbour where there were cruise ships like floating enormous blocks of flats. We don't fancy cruising anyway, but these behemoths confirmed our prejudices. The harbour area was heavily bombed in 1943 and there are large waste lands.

 There's a memorial to victims of the anti-mafia movement, including one sponsored by LaStampa in memory of journalists who were killed. I think it has helped somewhat, although the Mafia are very far from a spent force. Perhaps they are a bit more subtle in their approach nowadays. There was lots going on -a pop concert for young people, professional and amateur fishermen, joggers, dog walkers and such, so after a long sit and watch we set off back to the restaurant -  the same as last night's,  it was good, and shortly after fell into bed.

The next day we got up early and set off to Monreale The parking for the B&B is secure, but it's only small and contained six cars and a scooter jigsawed into place, so we needed the help of Alessandro and Massimo to juggle cars to get out. It was all rather fun and quite Italian.