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Wednesday, November 9, 2022
We started the day with a tour of the Cathedral of Syracuse aka The Cathedral of the Nativity of Holy Mary aka The Duomo. The original building on this site was the Temple of Athena. It was built by the Greeks during the 5th Century BC. The Cathedral was build in the 7th Century AD. From the outside it’s easy to see that the present building was constructed using the same footprint and on the existing foundation. We paid €2.00 per person to enter. Credit cards are accepted.
As expected the church is adorned with art and fixtures that span many centuries. The building still utilizes the huge doric columns from the Temple of Athena for support along all the walls. The floors are Baroque style inlaid marble. The roof is Gothic style wooden trusses. The Baptismal Font is a reused Greek marble urn from the 3rd Century BC. There is one large, beautifully decorated side chapel with a major relic of Saint Lucy (Santa Lucia), Baroque frescos, and a marble slab carved with a famous rendering of The Last Supper from 1763.
In the back there is a small room dedicated to Saint Lucy, a martyr who was born in and died in Syracuse around 304 AD; she is the patron saint of Syracuse. On display you will see her shoes and her dress along with other items pertaining to her.
Next we headed over to the Southern most tip of the island to see Castello Maniace. It was constructed around 1232 by Emperor Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. The castle bears the name of a Byzantine general who captured the city from the Arabs in 1038 and who build the first castle there. Entry cost €5.00 per person. Credit cards are accepted.
Our tour started with a walk through a small museum. There was an interesting panel explaining how hand grenades came into being after gunpowder was invented in the 16th Century. It said that the grenades looked like pomegranates and so they named for them for the fruit. In Italian the fruit are called, “granata”.
The castle, really more of a fort, retains a lot of its original Gothic character with intricate marble casing around the doors and windows and high ceilings with large arches. There’s not too much to see. We walked around the entire perimeter where we could see the remnants of gun emplacements. Of course, the castle is surrounded by water on three sides and so there is a fantastic view everywhere you look. Inside the great hall deep in the interior there is a huge open space. Today it is being used to display works of modern sculpture.
After seeing the castle we walked over to the West side of the island and had lunch at a seaside cafe. This inspired us to order seafood. I got zuppa di cozze (soup with mussels) and Deborah got couscous alla pescatora (couscous with fish). The portions were huge, the fish was fresh, the sea breeze was delightful, and we enjoyed it immensely. It’s worth mentioning that couscous is a very popular dish in these parts. No doubt it was brought over by the Arabs many years ago.
While walking back to the apartment we found that Chiesa di Santa Lucia alla Badia, a church that had always been closed, was open. We went inside. The church is fairly plain inside with just a couple of colorful frescos on the ceiling. Sometime in 1608 Caravaggio, on his way back from Malta to Rome, stopped in Syracuse. He was commissioned to paint something based on the life of Santa Lucia. It appears that the painting in question hung in this church for a short period of time. Today that painting is said to be on display at The Church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro here in Syracuse. We intend to check it out on another day.
Caravaggio led an eventful life. His story is an interesting one. We’ll go into it some more after we visit another one of his works, which has a fascinating story of its own, in Malta.
Before going home we stopped in at a gelato place that our host recommended (we asked him to recommend a gelato place and a pastry place). The gelato was good but nothing special. We walked by the pastry shop he recommended. There was a small selection and nothing really appealed. Fortunately, we found another bakery that had some amazing looking cookies in the window. We bought some for dessert after dinner. Some were almond / marzipan and others were lemon. They tasted even better than they looked.
Thursday, November 19, 2022
We visited The Galleria Regionale di Palazzo Bellomo. It’s a museum housed in a genuine Medieval palace that specializes in Medieval art sourced from the area. Entry was €8.00 per person. Credit cards are normally accepted but since the machine was down I paid in cash.
The collection included a large number of Byzantine paintings and triptychs. Most were in surprisingly good condition. We suspected that most had been restored relatively recently. There was also a nice display of Majolica, marble sarcophagi with high relief carvings, architectural components, sculptures, and illuminated music and scriptures. The palace was the perfect setting for a collection of this type.
Afterwards we had lunch in a cafe consisting of pasta with sausage and chicken cutlets. For dessert Deborah got hot chocolate. You don’t think that seems like dessert? You’ve never had European hot chocolate. It’s more like a very dark chocolate pudding. It’s very rich and very filling.
