Siracusa is a Sicilian city where three thousand years of continuous settlement sit inside a single building: the cathedral of Ortigia stands within the walls of a Doric temple raised in 480 BCE, its fluted columns still visible from the nave. Corinthian colony, Greek metropolis, Roman prize, Arab and Norman city, all layered on one street plan.
At a glance
Siracusa began as a Corinthian colony founded in 734 BCE by Archias of Corinth on the small island of Ortigia. By the 5th century BCE it had grown into the largest city of the Greek world, a status Cicero later summed up by calling it the most beautiful of all cities. Five successive cultures, Greek, Punic, Roman, Arab and Norman, left their mark on the same urban fabric, and the columns of the 480 BCE Temple of Athena still stand inside the Christian cathedral built around them in 640 CE.
The UNESCO listing of 2005, reference 1200, covers two parts: the ancient city of Siracusa itself and the rock-cut necropolis of Pantalica, whose thousands of Bronze Age tombs predate the Greek colony by centuries.
Key facts
- Temple of Athena: a Doric hexastyle peripteral temple built in 480 BCE by the tyrant Gelon to mark his victory over Carthage at Himera, with six columns on the short sides and fourteen on the long ones.
- Ancient description: Cicero’s Verrine Orations (II.4.119–121, 70 BCE) give the most detailed surviving account of a Greek temple in Sicily, describing its painted panels, gilded doors and the ornaments looted by the governor Verres in 73 BCE.
- Conversion to a cathedral: in 640 CE, under Bishop Zosimus, the temple’s colonnades were walled into the nave, twelve columns to each side, and can still be seen from inside the church.
- Baroque facade: the present front was rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693 and completed in 1728.
- World Heritage status: inscribed by UNESCO in 2005 under reference 1200, comprising the ancient city of Siracusa and the necropolis of Pantalica.
History
Archias of Corinth founded the colony on Ortigia in 734 BCE, choosing the island for its single defensible isthmus, the freshwater spring of Arethusa rising on the shoreline, and the depth of the Grand Harbour beyond it. The city’s Greek name for the island, meaning quail island, recalled the migratory birds said to rest there.
Siracusa’s power drew the ambitions of Athens, whose Sicilian Expedition of 415–413 BCE ended in one of the heaviest defeats of the Peloponnesian War, when the Athenian fleet was trapped and destroyed in the Grand Harbour. Thucydides described it as the greatest disaster of Greek history. Roman rule followed, documented above all by Cicero, who served as quaestor in Sicily and later prosecuted the corrupt governor Verres for stripping the city’s temples of their treasures. Arab rule from 827 to 1072 CE brought one of the most transformative periods of Islamic urbanism in Sicily, before Norman conquest added a further layer to the city’s fabric.
What you see
Ortigia, the original 60-hectare island, is best explored on foot. From the bridge linking it to the mainland the route runs past the Temple of Apollo, the oldest Doric temple in Sicily with two of its columns still standing, along Via della Maestranza with its baroque palaces, into Piazza del Duomo, and on to the Fonte Aretusa, a spring on the seafront fringed with papyrus plants, the only wild papyrus growing in Europe outside Egypt.
The Archaeological Park of Neapolis contains the Teatro Greco, a fifth-century BCE theatre cut into the limestone hillside and the largest Greek theatre in Sicily, and the Orecchio di Dionisio, an ancient limestone quarry with an extraordinary natural echo. The cave’s name was coined by Giorgio Vasari in 1568, during a visit made with Caravaggio, who was in Siracusa around 1608–1609 after fleeing Malta.
Beyond the city, the Anapo canyon holds the rock-cut necropolis of Pantalica, thousands of tomb entrances carved into the cliff faces between 1270 and 730 BCE by the Bronze Age Sicel culture, well before the arrival of the Greeks.
Practical information
- Cathedral: open to visitors within regular hours; check the Diocese of Siracusa’s own channels for services and access.
- Neapolis Archaeological Park: entry to the Teatro Greco and the Orecchio di Dionisio requires a ticket; consult the park’s official site for current admission and opening times.
- Best light: the cathedral facade in Piazza del Duomo takes full sun in the morning and warm side light in the late afternoon.
- Ortigia: compact and walkable, with the ancient Greek grid of city blocks still legible in its streets.
Getting there
Ortigia sits on its own small island, joined to the mainland part of Siracusa by the Ponte Umbertino, built in 1895; before the bridge existed the island could only be reached by boat or a wooden drawbridge. The archaeological park of Neapolis and the fortress of Castello Eurialo lie on the mainland side of the modern city, while Pantalica is reached separately, along the Anapo river gorge.
Nearby
- Neapolis Archaeological Park — within Siracusa, home to the Teatro Greco and the Orecchio di Dionisio.
- Castello Eurialo — on the Epipole plateau above the city, built under Dionysius I between 402 and 397 BCE and considered the most complex surviving Greek defensive system in the Mediterranean.
- Catacombe di San Giovanni — in the Tyche quarter, the largest catacomb network in Sicily, with the Cripta di San Marziano traditionally linked to Saint Peter.
- Pantalica — about 25 km from Siracusa, a rock-cut Bronze Age necropolis in the Anapo canyon.
Sources
- UNESCO
- Cicero, Verrine Orations
- Thucydides
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