Sicily, Still

Looking out past the Valley of the Temples (which is, inexplicably, a ridge.) 

Part two on our time in Sicily! Find the first part here. 

With our time in Palermo over, we rented a car and the four of us headed south, into the countryside. Driving in Sicily was not difficult; once we got out of the big city the traffic disappeared. There were no turnpikes (freeways, highways) along our route, just a meandering two-lane road. Sometimes pretty meandering, but rarely in bad shape. Biggest frustration: speed limits too low! We were poking along at speeds much slower than the road would support, especially with no other cars in sight. I suspect that local authorities dealt with speeding on the road by repeatedly lowing the speed limit. When we did encounter locals on the road, usually they were passing us… like we were standing still!

Really? A speed limit of 50 KPH, 30 MPH, on a fine road like this?!

Our first stop was the Valley of the Temples, near the modern city of…

Agrigento

Sicily, we were told, has better Greek ruins than Greece. Yeah? Could be. We’re not experts, so we’ll go with the travel pundits on this one. Agrigento was a major ancient city, founded around 580 BCE and populated with Greeks from colonies further east in Sicily.

The modern city is rather extensive, but what interested us were the ruins.

Tempio di Giunone, the Temple of Juno (aka Temple of Heracles), at the western end of the Valley of the Temples. Considered to be the oldest temple, from the 6th C BCE.

Tempio della Concordia, or Temple of Concordia. The names in the Valley are speculative: this temple is named for an agreement reached in a modern meeting room near the temple.

Another view of the Temple of Juno (or whatever!) Regardless of the name, these pillars have been standing for a very long time.

New life springing from old: a century plant sends up its bloom amidst ancient ruins.

The statue of a heroic angel—a modern art work—with the Temple of the Concordia.
Paula's photo.

A telemone, or atlas, from the Temple of Zeus. It stands 25 feet tall, and there were perhaps a dozen of them holding the massive roof of the temple. This one is in the museum at the Valley of the Temples. Note the relative size of the baby grand piano.

Alan contemplates the past while leaning on a decaying telemone. This statue once helped hold up the roof of the massive Temple of Zeus, which is now completely destroyed.

A final view of a ruins as we make our way out of the Valley of the Temples.

Villa Romana

It seems that as the Roman Empire began to wind down, at least one über-rich merchant decided to get out of town, and set up shop somewhere really out of the way: near the center of the Sicilian isle. Our rich merchant, who apparently dealt in exotic wild animals from Africa, built himself an enormous enclave, lavishly decorated with mosaic floors.

Entryway into the villa.

entrance hallway. It is felt that the exotic animals depicted in these mosaics served as a sort of catalog for this presumed merchant of wild animals.

Sicily is well situated for trade between Rome and Africa. Rome relied on Africa for grain, and also exotic animals. The animals were displayed, then sent to the arena to kill and be killed in battles with armed gladiators and unarmed condemned prisoners.

These scenes from the main hallway, showing the capture of wild and exotic animals, support the idea that the owner dealt in these animals.

It seems the villa was buried by a landslide sometime around 1100, not to be discovered again until 1929. The mosaic floors are extensive (over 35,000 square feet) and well preserved, thanks to the landslide. It is now a… yup, UNESCO World Heritage site.

One of the more stunning mosaics: women athletes in competition. The woman in the robe at the far left holds a crown for the winner.

After leaving the Villa Romana del Casale we visited a few small towns on the way to our lodgings that night. Sicily is quite mountainous, and some towns are as much vertical as horizontal.

This extensive staircase was built in the 19th Century to better link the upper and lower parts of Caltagirone.
We preferred to stay in the lower part...

Clever street art in the town of Ragusa. Yeah - that kid (statue) is doing what you think he's doing.

Palm Sunday celebrations at Duomo di San Giorgio, Ragusa's cathedral.

Our time in Sicily is just about up. We spent a total of 10 days there and hiked through more towns than I can remember. It was an overview, so we didn’t stay in any place very long. But from what we saw, we will definitely return!

Except maybe not Catania. We spent our last night there because it has the other major airport on Sicily, and we had an early flight out. The city seemed… I don’t know, disorganized. We did have a  good time wandering around the historical downtown area. That was fun. But driving, not so fun. That was the disorganized part. The roads were bad, and driving across town felt uncertain.

Paula had insisted we check the car return at the airport the day before, and good thing, too. It had taken nearly an hour just to figure out what was what in the bright light of day. It seems there are very many car rental agencies - over 30 different ones, and several return areas.

The place we stayed that night in Catania has the distinction of being the most charmless lodging we’ve ever had: it was newly-refurbished with bare white walls and minimal—and boring—furniture. We were glad to leave the next morning, at 5AM, but driving through the city in the dark was strange. At least there was no traffic… except for the noisy Vespas that shot past us. And when we arrived at the airport we were ever so glad we'd checked out the rental return the day before: we never would have found it in the dark!

 

Mt. Etna seen from the top of the boarding ramp, just before getting on the plane; Catana Airport.

And today, the 25th of May, we hear Mt. Etna erupted, shutting down the Catana Airport! Glad that didn't happen while we were there... although we could have been. Ya never know what will happen when you travel.

It’s been a long trip so far: from the red rock canyons of Petra and the open desert of Wadi Rum, through Bible country and the Dead Sea to the many towns and sites, current and past, of Sicily. But we’re not done. Next up: the perennial romanticism of Sorrento and the Amalfi coast, with a brief stop in the Eternal City, Rome.

A mosaic from Villa Romana depicting Ulysses serving a cup of wine go Polypheus, the Cyclops, who held Ulysses and his men captive; an illustration of a tale from Homer's epic "Odyssey."