Ortygia

The oldest part of the city of Siracusa is Ortygia, a small island connected to the mainland by three bridges. The maze of narrow streets makes navigation interesting. The only redeeming feature in that respect is that if you walk long enough you will get to the water and can find your way from there. It is an island, after all.

While we visited we took in two main attractions. The first is the duomo. The building was originally a 5^th century BC, 6 x 14 column Greek temple dedicated to Athena. Notice, I didn’t say the duomo was built on the site of the temple. That is because the 7^th century AD church was constructed by filling in the spaces between the columns to create an edifice in the Christian style. The entrance façade was rebuilt in the 18^th century in the Baroque style. The remains of the columns and their Doric tops can be easily seen on the exterior of the building. Unfortunately, the cathedral was closed during our visit so we could not view the interior.

Our second stop was at the Fontana Arethusa, a natural fresh water pool where legend has it the nymph Arethusa took refuge when she was being pursued by Alpheus. It is not a fountain in the traditional sense with water gushing from a stone and concrete monolith. Rather, it is the opening where an underground spring/river surfaces. The pool, formed by manmade walls, is directly adjacent to the sea and empties into it, forming an estuary-like environment complete with a large stand of papyrus (reputed to be the northernmost papyrus) and a cotillion of ducks. The original inhabitants believed that the water flowed underground all the way from Greece. I’m not sure how they would have determined that, perhaps a message in a bottle dropped down a specific well in the motherland. While the water was originally pure and fresh, seismic activity at some point created a connection with salt water so that now the water which issues forth is somewhat brackish.