Siracusa, Sicily

Italy 2024 - Chapter 2

EUROPEITALYTRAVELSICILY

10/4/20241 min read

Italy 2024 Chapter 2 - After several great days in Palermo, we rented a van and headed east. Our first stop was a 4th-century Roman villa with wonderfully preserved mosaics on a grand scale. The owner of the villa is unknown, but due to its strategic location within the Roman empire, it is evident the villa was owned by a person with extreme wealth. The evidence suggests the villa owner was actively trading in grains, animals, and perhaps slaves, many of which ended up as entertainment elsewhere in the empire.

We stayed in an apartment on Ortygia Island in Siracusa. Siracusa or Syracuse was a Greek city founded in at least 700 BC as part of Magna Greca. The city is also the birthplace of one of the most important humans to ever live, the genius Archimedes. The phone or computer you are reading this may not have been possible if it wasn’t for the great Archimedes. When the Romans finally rose to prominence and tried to kick the Greeks out of Sicily, Archimedes thwarted them for nearly two years during the siege of Siracusa. Archimedes devised all sorts of Home Alone-style traps that the Romans continually fell into. Unfortunately, the Romans finally prevailed, and Archimedes was killed despite orders to capture him alive.

The Romans converted the existing Greek temple into a pagan temple at first, then later a catholic church. You can still see the Greek pillars within and outside the Duomo to this day.

We took a road trip through the countryside of southern Sicily and visited two of the seven cities destroyed by the earthquake and rebuilt in the 16th century. Noto and Palazzolo Acreide. Then, we took a Sicilian cooking class with a local family on their property, which had a great view of Mount Etna.