Blog Five – Ortigia, Syracusa, Sicily

Published by Alastair Reid on September 29, 2019September 29, 2019

[23rd -28th September 2019]

Our AirBnB host, Marcello, met us at the train station and drove us along to the island of Ortigia, which is the oldest part of the city of Syracusa. As we neared our apartment, the streets got narrower and crumblier. We walked the final hundred metres and noted that he made contact with, and introduced us to, a number of local guys in the street.

This, we discovered, was because the half of the long alleyway in which our apartment was situated seems to be almost the last bastion of the Syracusa Ultras, and the Young Team members basically spend all day hanging in the street, mostly on their phones – sitting on our apartment’s front stoop was a favoured position. They had recently crafted some quite well-executed graffiti in an attractive blue, marking their territory.

Initially, the boys were swaggering about in a slightly intimidating manner, sometimes wearing their Syracusa Ultras t-shirts, and the most fearsome individual was a hard looking young woman who shouted constantly, and was always accompanied by an even harder looking dog. However, they seemed to get used to us, and we almost got comfortable with them – they were always respectful and polite to us in the street, wishing us a cheery “Buona Serra!” whenever our paths crossed, which was two or three times a day.

After dark, everyone seemed to spend their time yelling loudly at everyone else, in the street and between houses, revving their scooters, and apparently standing on the fearsome dog, which omitted constant strangled yelps. Sometimes it seemed that an incident was going to break out, but in the end nothing untoward seemed to happen.

Gentrification is encroaching rapidly in Ortigia, with restaurants, bars, swish shops hotels and, yes, AirBnBs popping up amongst the previously derelict buildings. Our apartment was fantastic – new, modern, fully equipped and very comfortable indeed. The houses opposite, whose balconies almost touched ours, are in a terrible state , some with large holes in the roof, open gaps for windows, and a generally highly unsafe look. Guys who looked like they might have been African immigrants (a cliched guess) had made home across the alleyway in what looked like a squat.

Whilst the march of progress is inevitable, we felt sorry for the young people whose families have presumably always lived in Ortigia, and who are fiercely loyal to their shrinking home territory. They spend almost all day just hanging out in the street, as if they are ready to defend the place when someone comes along to build another hotel or renovate another crumbling building. It seems clear that it will soon shrink to nothing, and I don’t know where they will go then.

A remarkably cheap and easy small bus tour stopped a few yards from the end of our street, and for Euros 5 for an all day ticket, it took us wherever we wanted to go. This included the archeological park on “mainland” Syracusa, where the huge and fabulous Greek Theatre, and the smaller Roman Amphitheatre, are located. It also went to the vast warren of the Catacombs of San Giovanni and Santa Lucia, now empty of bones since being used as air raid shelters in WW2, but you wouldn’t want to get lost and spend the night down there.

Again a few yards from where we stayed, was a newly built bathing platform where you can get some shade from the fierce Sicilian sun, and hire sunbeds and umbrellas, and have a swim in the clear waters under the waterfront walls. A enjoyable boat trip out to caves along the shore, and back around Ortigia, was well worth the Euros 15 each, although it almost began with disaster (for the pilot) when he lowered the canopy abruptly onto Fiona’s head, to get under a very low bridge. We also went to the best exhibition of sculpture – Rodin to Giacommetti – I’ve ever seen, in a beautiful gallery space in Ortigia, part indoors and part outside, enhanced by the haunting music which accompanied it.

Ortigia is festooned with attractive streets, alleyways and piazzas, with a spectacularly beautiful Duomo square, which is actually more of an opulent crescent. Sipping cocktails there, facing the floodlit cathedral, transports you pleasurably to an entirely different world to that which exists 10 minutes walk away, down by the waterfront.

My dozen favourite images from our stay in Ortigia are included in the gallery below. Click on a thumbnail to see a bigger image.

Image Gallery