A Visit To Syracuse

Syracuse was the most important Greek city from the 5th to 3rd century B.C. It remained a powerful city until it was

defeated by the Romans in the 2nd century B.C. This was the last scheduled tour of this trip. Although it took about 2 hours form our base here to reach the city, we had a good view of Mt. Etna that seemed to be throwing up extra plums of smoke this morning. Our first stop was the Archaeological Park Necropolis. It was quite impressive a site which was evident as soon as we moved into it. We walked into the original quarry where slave worked to remove the limestone blocks which were used to build the city. There were massive “caves” where the blocks were removed by hammer a chisel. How they could even do it without modern equipment is amazing. The Ear of Dionysus is the most famous of these quarried caves. The Greek Teatro is very large and was hewing out of solid limestone. It is very impressive. The Romans also built an amphitheatre but it was small in comparison. There were many other sites in the park but we did not have time to visit them.

The second part of the tour was to the island of Ortigia. A short bride connects it to the mainland. Immediately after crossing the bridge we encountered the Temple of Apollo. There are many remaining parts of the structure. The main square has a large Duomo and buildings. We walked the “island” which is the oldest part of the city. It was the end of a long weekend, it was bright and sunny and all the restaurants were very crowded.

We had lunch along the waterfront and treated ourselves to another gelato. On the way back out of the city, we stopped at a cemetery where allied solders were buried. The grounds were impeccable. We did not have time enough to find the graves of Canadians who landed in this area in 1943.That ended the last included tour of this trip.Tomorrow we are taking another optional tour before preparing for our departure.