A thick blanket of marine cloud enveloped the eastern coast of the island as we headed for the magical hilltop village of Taromina. The citrus orchards and olive groves of Catania blurred together outside the coach windows as we listened to our guides recount the exploits of the vindictive despots of ancient Syracuse, the inventive contraptions devised by Archimedes in defense of his birthplace and the turbulent history of this fertile island that stoically suffered wave after wave of foreign invasions.
The amorphous form of Mt Etna, that eternal source of both life and death, began to take shape on the horizon beneath a cap of white vapor. Passing Catonica, our little caravan switch-backed up a series of precipitous turns traversing towering gorges on a series of graceful arched bridges. Awe-inspiring vistas of southern Calabria and the Sicilian coastline awaited us as we emerged in the orchestra of the Greek Theater. The ancients would have been inspired as much from the natural majesty of cliff-top setting glimpsed through the column-flanked arches of the later Roman stage building as from the words of the ancient dramatists and poets - Aristophanes, Euripides, Aeschylus and Ovid.
We were left to our leisure to explore the narrow, twisting lanes of the medieval town that so inspired Goethe and later, D. H. Lawrence in the 1920s. The group came together just after noon beneath the 12th century Torre dell'Orologio to wind our way through the narrow byways and lush hibiscus-lined paths of the civic garden before enjoying a wonderful four-course repast at the Villa Diodoro.
The Greek Theater and the Grotto of Syracuse were the scheduled highlights of our afternoon, but for those that strolled into Ortygia, the old quarter of Syracuse, it surely must have been the Piazza del Duomo, bathed in the warm tones of the setting autumn sun. The last rays of the autumn sunlight trapped the enraptured saints that decorated every niche of the soaring Baroque façade of the Duomo, in mid-flight. The stillness of the vast interior transported our souls to a place where time ceased to be. Sitting quietly on rickety wooden chairs our sense of timelessness was reinforced by the way the Sicilians had interwoven the elements of a Romanesque and Baroque structure glorifying the son of our Christian God into the soaring columns of an ancient Doric Temple dedicated to Athena. As the soft golden flood lights came on, old couples strolled arm in arm through the piazza, while little boys kicked their soccer ball excitedly around one end of the square and shoppers rushed to buy the essential elements of their evening meal ……images of Sicily we will treasure.
