A sort ofWhen the British writer Lawrence Durrell visited Syracuse Cathedral in 1975, he was ecstatic. “You start with a Greek temple,” he wrote in his travel book “Sicilian Carousel”, “embed the whole thing in a Christian building, and later you posted the promise that was destroyed by the 1693 earthquake. Man’s exterior wall. Fearless, you move on and take a new direction, replacing the old facade with the extremely elegant baroque composition created between 1728 and 1754. The whole thing, although dilapidated, still smiles and takes a deep breath, Shows a kind of power, as if it was made by Leonardo or Michelangelo.” The cathedral that attracted Durrell is located in the old town of Syracuse, a square rising gently on one side, its outline, A huge hull is reminiscent of the origin of this city.
Today’s Syracuse can be traced back to the settlement of Corinthian immigrants in 735 BC. They sailed along the southeast coast of Sicily and discovered a natural double harbor, an island dividing the sea into two bays. They gave the island an ancient name, Delos, which was the birthplace of the sacred twins Artemis and Apollo: Ortigia, the island of Quail, expelled the Sicurians who lived there and established a Greek colony. . In less than three centuries, the town-after a series of attempts, clever weddings and lazy conspiracies, skirmishes with the Carthaginians, and wars with other Greek foundations-became Sicily The most powerful city on the island. In the Greek world, she became a competitor to Athens. Nymphodoros of Syracuse was a Hellenistic travel writer in the 3rd century BC. He was blinded by the grandeur and beauty of the city and said that the total population has exceeded 1 million.
Even Plato can’t stand the brilliance
For these imaginative authors, this may be a typical exaggeration. They always want to provide readers with something unheard of. However, what is certain is that, based on excavations and archaeological studies, Syracuse expanded rapidly from Ortigia to the hinterland of Sicily. Dionysius I, a role model for all tyrants, surrounded the new city with a 27-kilometer-long wall. What’s amazing is that its boldness and sheer length reminiscent of the arrogance of the Great Wall of China. It was built many centuries later. Yes. Even Plato must have been blinded by this power and this brilliance. How else can you explain his three arduous journeys by boat from Athens to Syracuse, turning the tyrant of Syracuse into a wise ruler, if not a philosopher, with deceptive hopes?
From the beginning of this great era, when Syracuse flourished into the Manhattan of the Mediterranean, only a few buildings heralded. Most of Neapolis was rebuilt, the Great Wall was demolished, and its huge blocks were used for other construction projects. This also applies to the temple of Apollo that is badly worn and repaired at the entrance to the grammar school, the bazaar, or Ortygia. Many have been recycled. Today, anyone who wanders the Quail Island with a vigilant eye can find Spalia everywhere. The Greek Theater is still impressive, it is said to be 6 meters wider than the Athens Theater, for which the great Aeschylus wrote some plays. According to reports at the time, “The Persian” premiered here. The theater received 15,000 visitors. If you watch new works by Euripides or Aristophane in the summer and let your eyes wander from the cave and Porto Grande to the Plemmirio peninsula ), you will feel as if you are back in the era of Great Greece.
