Three days in Syracuse: a cathedral built inside a Greek temple

Two nights on Ortigia, the small island where the city began, with the Greek theatre and the quarries across the bridge and a fish market at the front door.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Syracuse (Italy)
Places
8 across 3 days
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Syracuse was, for a couple of centuries, the largest and richest Greek city anywhere, larger than Athens and rich enough to defeat it. Then Rome took it in 212 BC, killed Archimedes in the process, and it spent the next two thousand years getting quietly smaller.

What is left is unusually legible. The Greek city is a park on the mainland: a theatre cut into the rock, quarries the prisoners of war were kept in, and the base of an altar longer than two football pitches. The living city is Ortigia, a small island joined by two bridges, rebuilt in golden baroque after the 1693 earthquake and now about a kilometre of lanes, sea on all sides.

The single object that explains the place is the cathedral. It began as a temple to Athena in the fifth century BC, became a church in the 600s by the simple method of walling up the gaps between the columns, and has never stopped being one. Those columns are still standing, inside and out, holding up a baroque front.

Highlights

  • Doric columns from 480 BC embedded in the walls of a working cathedral
  • A Greek theatre cut into solid rock, still used for a season of tragedy every spring
  • A limestone quarry turned garden, with a cave Caravaggio named the Ear of Dionysius
  • A freshwater spring twenty metres from the sea, growing papyrus, in the middle of town

Where to stay

Syracuse, two nights

Founded by settlers from Corinth in 734 BC on a small island with a freshwater spring, which is why the city is where it is. It grew across onto the mainland, fought Carthage and Athens, produced Archimedes, and was at one point the place a Greek would have named if you asked for the greatest city in the world.

The modern town is small, provincial and pleasant, and almost everything a visitor wants is on the original island or in the park on the mainland opposite. Two nights is the right length; three if you want the baroque towns inland as well.

Day by day

Day 1 in Syracuse (Italy)

Ortigia, the temple cathedral and the spring

Cross the bridge and the first thing you meet is a row of broken Doric columns in a sunken enclosure, the oldest stone temple in Sicily, sitting in the middle of a traffic junction. It sets the tone: everything here is layered directly on top of everything else.

Walk on to the cathedral square, which is a long white limestone oval and one of the finest squares in Italy. The cathedral on it looks entirely baroque from the front, and then you go in and there are twelve fifth-century BC columns down the left wall, weathered, out of plumb, holding up the roof of a Christian church that was built around them.

End at the spring on the western shore, a pool of fresh water a few metres from the sea, ringed with papyrus and full of grey mullet and ducks. The Greeks explained it with a story about a nymph escaping a river god; geologically it is a spring that surfaces at exactly the wrong place, and it is why anybody ever settled here.

  1. 16:00

    Tempio di Apollo

    Religious

    Sixth century BC, the earliest Doric temple on the island, and reduced now to a platform, a wall and a couple of column stumps. Two minutes, and it explains what you are walking on.

  2. 17:00

    Cattedrale della Natività di Maria Santissima

    Religious

    A temple to Athena from around 480 BC, converted into a church in the seventh century, given a new baroque front after the earthquake, and never once out of use. The columns are visible inside on the left and outside on the right flank.

  3. 18:30

    Antica Fonte Aretusa

    Other

    A freshwater pool at the edge of the sea, growing one of the few wild stands of papyrus in Europe. Free, always open, and the place the whole town walks past in the evening.

  4. 20:30

    Dinner on the island

    Eat

    Fish, simply done, in a lane rather than on the waterfront. Eat late; nothing here fills up before nine.

With more time: The castle on the tip of the island is a thirteenth century fortress built for Frederick II, with a great vaulted hall and a bare headland around it where the local teenagers swim off the rocks. It closes early, so it belongs to an afternoon rather than an evening.

Day 2 in Syracuse (Italy)

The Greek city: theatre, quarries and altar

Everything Greek is on the mainland in one park, and it is best done first thing before the rock starts throwing heat back at you. The theatre is the centrepiece: cut directly into the hillside in the fifth century BC, one of the largest in the Greek world, with a view down over the harbour that the audience would have had while watching Aeschylus premiere here.

Below it are the quarries. The city dug its building stone out of the ground here for centuries and used the resulting pits as prisons, most famously for seven thousand Athenians captured in 413 BC, who were kept in them and left to die. The quarries are now sunken gardens of lemon and oleander, which is a strange thing to know while walking through one.

The Roman contribution is an amphitheatre round the corner, and between the two lies the base of an altar two hundred metres long, built so that four hundred and fifty bulls could be sacrificed at one go.

  1. 09:15

    Teatro Greco

    Historic

    Fifty-nine rows cut into living rock, with an inscription still legible along one of the walkways. Go up to the top for the harbour, and look for the water channel and the tombs cut into the cliff above the back row.

  2. 11:00

    Latomia del Paradiso

    Nature

    A green hollow of citrus trees in the floor of an ancient quarry, with a twenty-three metre cave at one end shaped like an ear. Caravaggio named it, on the story that the tyrant Dionysius used it to eavesdrop on his prisoners. Clap once inside and you will hear why the story caught on.

  3. 12:15

    Anfiteatro romano

    Historic

    A Roman amphitheatre carved into the slope in the first century BC, overgrown and largely unvisited, with the drain for the arena still visible in the middle of the floor.

  4. 13:30

    Late lunch back on Ortigia

    Eat

    Walk or take the bus back over the bridge and eat properly. Nothing in the archaeological park is worth eating and the cafes outside the gate know it.

With more time: The archaeological museum, ten minutes from the park in a garden behind the modern basilica, is the second best in Sicily and the natural companion to the morning: the temple sculpture, the grave goods and a famous headless Venus rising from the sea.

Day 3 in Syracuse (Italy)

The market, the sea walls, and going

The market is a morning thing and it is over by two, so the last day starts there. It runs down a couple of streets behind the temple, it is loud, and the stallholders perform: fish held up, prices shouted, samples pressed on anybody who slows down.

Then walk the sea front. Ortigia is ringed by a promenade on old fortifications, and doing a lap of the island takes about forty minutes with the water on one side the whole way.

Buses to Catania and its airport go from the bus station just over the bridge and take about an hour, so an early afternoon departure works.

  1. 08:30

    Antico Mercato di Ortigia

    Visit

    Best between eight and eleven. Buy capers, dried tomatoes, almonds and cheese to take home, and let one of the sandwich stalls build you something enormous for the journey.

  2. 10:30

    Castello Maniace

    Historic

    The castle on the point, with a vaulted hall on columns and the harbour on both sides. Half an hour, and the walk out to it along the ramparts is half the pleasure.

  3. 12:30

    Last lunch, then the coach

    Eat

    Something with sea urchin or anchovy on the island, then ten minutes over the bridge to the buses.

With more time: With a car or an extra day, Noto is half an hour inland: a whole town rebuilt after the 1693 earthquake in one honey-coloured stone and one style, with a cathedral at the top of a staircase and balconies held up by carved grotesques. In May the main street is covered in a carpet of flower petals for a weekend.

Before you go

Where to stay

On Ortigia, without much question. The island is where the restaurants, the market and the evening are, it is small enough to cross in fifteen minutes, and the mainland town around it is a modern grid with nothing to recommend it beyond cheaper rooms.

The eastern edge of the island, facing the open sea, is quieter and catches the sunrise. The streets around the market are livelier and noisier. Both are five minutes from the cathedral square.

Getting there and around

The airport is Catania, an hour away by a frequent coach that drops you at the bus station a short walk from the bridges. Trains from Catania exist and take longer for no benefit. Once here, everything on Ortigia is on foot and the archaeological park is a twenty-five minute walk or a short bus from the bridge.

A car is only worth having if you plan to see the baroque towns inland, and it is a liability on the island itself, where most streets are closed to traffic and parking is metered and scarce.

Tickets and timing

The archaeological park runs on a single ticket, sometimes combined with the archaeological museum, and there is no need to book. Go at opening: the site is white rock with very little shade and it becomes unpleasant by noon from May onwards.

The Greek theatre hosts a festival of classical drama in May and June, performed in Italian at sunset, and during rehearsal season parts of the theatre are covered with a modern stage and seating. If you want the bare rock, come outside those months.

Eating

The market on Ortigia is the best hour of the day for food: tuna and swordfish on ice, mounds of capers and dried tomatoes, sheep's cheese, and one or two stalls that will build you an enormous sandwich to order from whatever is in front of them.

Sit-down cooking here is southeastern Sicilian, which means fish, wild fennel, almonds and pistachio. Look for pasta with sea urchin in season, marinated anchovies, and the local sweet wine from Noto. Granita in the morning, as everywhere in Sicily, and a proper cannolo after dinner.

The pleasure here is the compression. In one afternoon you can stand in a fifth century BC temple, a Byzantine conversion of it, a baroque square built after an earthquake, and a fish market that has probably been on that spot the whole time.

Stay on the island, eat late, and walk the sea wall before breakfast.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Syracuse better than Taormina?
For antiquity and for a place to stay, yes. Taormina has the more spectacular single view and the shops; Syracuse has the better city, the better food and a fraction of the cruise traffic. If you are doing eastern Sicily, base yourself here and see Taormina in a day.
How long do the Greek ruins take?
Half a day for the park at a comfortable pace, plus an hour for the museum if you want the context. It is all open rock with almost no shade, so the calculation in summer is really about heat rather than distance.
Should I add Noto?
If you have three nights rather than two, yes. It is half an hour away, it is the most complete baroque town in Sicily, and it is small enough to see in an afternoon. Ragusa and Modica, further west, are the same idea with hills and chocolate and need a car.
Can I swim?
Off the rocks on the eastern side of Ortigia, where there are ladders into deep clear water and a small paying lido, and there are sand beaches south of the city towards the nature reserve. It is not a beach holiday destination, which is part of why it stays pleasant.
When should I come?
April to June, or September and October. The classical drama season fills May and June and books out the hotels. July and August are very hot and the archaeological park in the middle of the day is genuinely punishing. Winters are mild and the island is almost empty.