Day 29

Buongiorno,

We are still in Siracusa, and very much enjoying B&B Nostos.

Today was spent visiting more ancient ruins. Like Taormina, the Greeks built a theatre, Teatre, in Siracusa. This one is quite amazing, because it has been carved out of a limestone hillside.

If you look carefully at the photos of the seats, you will see that they are not made up of blocks of stone. They have been sculpted into the hillside. It must have been an amazing piece of design, and taken incredible skill to excavate.

The amazing thing when we walk around these old theatres and colosseums, is how closely they resemble the design of our modern stadiums such as Rugby Park or Vector Arena. The way the seats are laid out, the tiers of seating, the aisles with steps. All designed to get people in and out as quickly as possible.

Even the steepness of the seating resembles that of Vector Arena. The seating needs to be steep so that the people in front do not block the view of the people behind. Thus the stairs are also steep. I wonder of the ladies of ancient Sicily tried to walk these steps in high heeled shoes like the modern women of Auckland try to do at Vector Arena?

Next to the remains of the theatre was the quarry where the Greeks cut stone for building materials. The quarry was very deep into the hillside.

The highlight of the quarry is the Ear of Dionysius. This was once a natural cave that the quarry masters then cut stone from. We’re not sure how big the original cave was, but the existing cave is huge, very high and cut very deep into the hillside. If you look at the walls you can see how flat and smooth they are, very unlike a natural cave. Look even closer and you can see the chisel marks made as the stone was cut.

The cave curves into a spiral as you go deeper into it, much like the shape of the ear canal of a human. It is said that sound echos up to sixteen times in the cave. Legend has it that Dionysius had his suspected enemies imprisoned at the rear of the cave. He would then conceal himself at the mouth of the cave (which is out of eyesight of the rear) and listen to their plans and plots to overthrow him.

Nearby there were the ruins of an old Roman colosseum. It was very much a ruin though, and didn’t look like it was ever very big. We’ve seen better. If you want to see the best example of a Roman colosseum, go to the city of Nimes in France.

After a very ordinary lunch we headed for another Archimedes museum. This was an outdoor display with large interactive models of Archimedes' principles and the machines he designed and built.

Once upon a time this museum would have been a great attraction. The models have all been very cleverly built from modern materials. If they worked, they would have demonstrated the principles of

Archimedes in a simple and beautiful way. Unfortunately the displays have not been maintained at all. Many of them did not work, or were broken. One even broke when we touched it. It was a real shame.

As we were walking around Siracusa we kept seeing a strange looking tower that looked like a concrete Christmas Tree. Today we could see that it was not far from where we were, so we decided to investigate. It turned out to be a Basilica, Sanctuary of the Madonna delle Lacrime. It was closed, so we weren’t doing so well this afternoon.

The weather in Sicily is still very warm. It has been raining a bit, but it is still warm and humid when the sun comes out.

We spent the afternoon back on the island of Ortigia. We visited the Fountain of Diana (Roman goddess of the hunt, the moon and nature). We visited the cathedral, which was set in a beautiful piazza. The Siracusean’s have done a lovely job of upgrading the public spaces on the island of Ortigia.

The unique aspect of the cathedral is that it was originally a Greek temple. At some point in its history the Catholic Church converted it to a Christian church, and since then it has been modified it into the

traditional design of a cathedral. You can see in the pictures the original Doric columns of the Greek temple.

As you can probably tell, we had pretty much run out of things to do in Siracusa by now. We just wandered around Ortigia, then back to our room for a rest before dinner.

Dinner was in a great little restaurant we found down a narrow ally during our afternoon wander. Very small, quiet and intimate. The only thing that spoiled it was the owner and one of her wait staff having an argument in Italian while we were trying to eat. The Italians do enjoy a good argument.

And so ends our day. It was pretty underwhelming, but sometimes that happens.

Love to you all from Grandma and Koro and Buzzy Bee. XXX OOO