Tag: ancient
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Today, Wear Comfortable Shoes
On Day 4 of Savoring Sicily, you’ll start the morning by greeting the gods at Agrigento’s Valley of the Temples. First stop, the 5th century B.C. Temple of Juno (or Hera, if you are Greek!). This magnificent monument is just one of seven in the UNESCO World Heritage Site that spans 2 kilometers. So wear…
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Your Literature Teacher Would Be Jealous
Experience Sicily’s Evelina Buttitta, along with some of my other cousins, made their annual pilgrimage to Siracusa this week to see theater in the Teatro Antico of the city’s archaeological park. Here’s a photo taken by Evelina of Sophocles’ “Electra.” For a few weeks in May and June each year, you can experience ancient Greek…
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Palermo’s Oasis of Tranquility
My favorite Norman, King Roger II, commissioned Palermo’s San Giovanni degli Eremiti (Saint John of the Hermits) in 1130. Completed in 1148, its red domes rise above a garden of citrus trees, roses, fichi d’india, jasmine, and other exotic plants. On Monday afternoon, we wandered through the pathways and cloister of this oasis of tranquility…
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Early Bronze Age Sicily
From the Museo Archeologico Paolo Orsi in Siracusa, this door slab with carved spiral, anthropomorphic motifs is from the early Bronze Age. It’s dated to be from sometime between the 22nd and 15th century B.C. and was collected from a tomb in Castelluccio, an archaeological area between Noto and Palazzolo Acreida in southeastern Sicily. Yes,…
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It’s Show Time in Siracusa
Next week, the 52nd season of L’Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico (INDA) will raise the curtain (so to speak) in Siracusa. INDA has existed since 1914, and it presents ancient masterpieces of theater at Siracusa’s Teatro Antico — in the midst of the ancient Greek and Roman city’s archaeological park. This year’s series includes Sophocles’…
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A Bust of Persephone
Clay busts of Kore/Persephone, such as this one pictured from the archaeological museum in Aidone (Enna Province), have been found throughout Sicily, proving the significance of the goddess and her story. In the 5th century to the 3rd century B.C., for example, women devotees prayed to Kore for healthful fertility and protection during various stages…
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Our May 2016 Tour, Day 7: If Walls Could Talk
If walls could talk, the Duomo of Siracusa would have 2500 years of human history to tell. We know this because its walls are supported by Doric-style columns from an ancient Temple of Athena that was build in the 5th century BC (pictured on the left). During the in the 7th century, when the Byzantines…
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Happy Valentine’s Day with a Kiss
Happy Valentine’s Day! Terracotta statuette of a reclining couple from the first century AD, excavated in 1967 in the Akradina district of Siracusa (Museo Orsi, Siracusa)
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Bronze Champion
During antiquity, bronze was not a material that sculptors in Sicily used often, so when I come across a bronze statuette like this one of an athlete in Siracusa’s Museo Orsi, I take note. This statuette is from c. 460 B.C., and according to the information in the museum, it is called “The Youth (Ephebe)…