Syracuse and Ortigia: Greek Sicily’s Greatest City

Syracuse, Sicily, was founded by settlers from Corinth around 734 BC and became the largest and most powerful city of the Greek West, a rival to Athens and Carthage. Cicero, writing in the first century BC, called it the greatest of the Greek cities and the most beautiful of all. Two parts of the city carry that story today: Ortigia, the small island where the Greeks first landed, and the Neapolis on the mainland, where the theatre, quarries and great altar of the Hellenistic city survive. Together they form the core of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2005 with the rock-cut necropolis of Pantalica. On both the 25-day Mediterranean Islands of Malta, Sicily, Sardinia & Corsica tour and the 12-day Malta & Sicily small group tour, Syracuse is the base for Days 6 and 7, the first two nights in Sicily after the crossing from Malta.

Syracuse, Sicily: why the city mattered

The Corinthian colonists, led according to tradition by Archias, chose Ortigia for its fresh water and its two harbours. Its rulers made it the leading power of Greek Sicily. In 480 BC the tyrant Gelon and his allies defeated a Carthaginian army at Himera, and Syracuse built a temple to Athena as a thank offering. Between 415 and 413 BC the city withstood a great Athenian siege and destroyed the invading force; thousands of Athenian prisoners were held in the stone quarries you can still walk through in the Neapolis.

Under Dionysius I in the fourth century BC and Hieron II in the third, Syracuse was one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean. Archimedes was born here around 287 BC and died here in 212 or 211 BC, when Roman forces took the city after a long siege. Syracuse then became the seat of Roman government in Sicily. For the wider story of the Greek colonies, their wars with Carthage and the coming of Rome, read our account of the early history of Sicily; this guide concentrates on what you can see on the ground.

Ortigia: the island at the heart of Syracuse

Ortigia is where most visitors spend their free hours in Syracuse. The island is joined to the mainland by short bridges and has been lived on for some 3,000 years, so Greek temples, medieval palaces and Baroque churches sit within a few streets of each other. The best way to see it is simply to walk, from the ruins by the bridges to the castle at its southern tip.

The Temple of Apollo

The first monument you meet, in Piazza Pancali just over the bridges, is the Temple of Apollo. Built around 565 BC, it is one of the oldest Doric temples in Sicily, and UNESCO describes it as the oldest in Western Greece. Over the centuries it became a Byzantine church, a mosque, a Norman church and then part of a Spanish barracks, and it re-emerged from the later buildings only from the late nineteenth century. What survives is a sunken platform with the lower parts of massive, closely spaced columns, a few still rising to their capitals. Each column was cut from a single block of stone.

Piazza Duomo and the cathedral in a Greek temple

A short walk south brings you to Piazza Duomo, a long, gently curving square paved in pale limestone and lined with Baroque palaces. Its centrepiece is the cathedral. The church was built into the Temple of Athena raised after Himera in the fifth century BC. UNESCO notes that the temple was reused as a church from the sixth century AD. The builders walled up the spaces between the outer columns and cut arches through the inner walls, so the Doric columns of the Greek temple still carry the structure.

You see this best from Via Minerva, along the cathedral’s north flank, where the columns stand out of the medieval masonry, and again inside, where they line the aisles. The façade belongs to a later age. After the earthquake of 1693, which devastated south-eastern Sicily, the front was rebuilt in the eighteenth century to a design by Andrea Palma, with Corinthian columns and statues including Saint Lucy, the city’s patron, and Saint Marcian, its first bishop.

The Fountain of Arethusa

On the western shore of Ortigia, overlooking the Great Harbour, a freshwater spring rises into a semicircular basin planted with papyrus. This is the Fountain of Arethusa, one of many springs that once made the island habitable. In the myth retold by Ovid, the nymph Arethusa fled the river god Alpheus in the Peloponnese and was turned into a spring that resurfaced here, and Alpheus crossed beneath the sea to join her. For the Greeks of Syracuse, the story tied their city to the old country. The present basin dates from 1843, and the promenade beside it is a favourite place to watch the sun set over the harbour.

Castello Maniace

At the southern tip of Ortigia stands Castello Maniace, a square fortress with round corner towers built for the emperor Frederick II between about 1232 and 1240. It takes its name from George Maniakes, the Byzantine general who retook Syracuse from the Arabs around 1038–40. Inside, the great vaulted hall and the carved Gothic portal are the highlights, and the walls look out over the open sea and the entrance to the Great Harbour. Opening hours are limited and vary by day of the week, so check locally if you plan to go in.

The Neapolis Archaeological Park

The Neapolis, meaning “new city”, was one of the five quarters of Greek and Roman Syracuse, and the archaeological park covers its northern part. The Sicilian Region’s parks department describes a sequence that is easy to follow on foot: the Greek theatre, the Roman amphitheatre, the Altar of Hieron II and the Street of Tombs, set against the old stone quarries of the Latomia del Paradiso and Santa Venera.

The Greek theatre

The theatre is the park’s great monument and one of the largest of the Greek world. A theatre stood here from the fifth century BC, and tradition holds that Aeschylus staged a play here for Hieron I. The form you see is largely the work of Hieron II in the third century BC. The seating is cut directly into the rock of the Temenite hill: 67 rows, divided into nine wedges by stairways and crossed by a single broad walkway. On the wall above that walkway, Greek inscriptions name Zeus Olympios and members of Hieron’s family, including his wife Philistis. Above the theatre, a terrace with rock-cut niches looks out over the modern city to the sea.

The Latomie and the Ear of Dionysius

Below the theatre lie the latomie, the vast limestone quarries that supplied the stone for Greek Syracuse. They are now sunken gardens of citrus and old trees, but Thucydides describes Athenian prisoners kept in the open in the quarries after 413 BC on meagre rations. The most famous feature of the Latomia del Paradiso is the Ear of Dionysius, a tall, tapering cave about 23 metres high that curves some 65 metres back into the rock. It was named by the painter Caravaggio in 1608, and legend says the tyrant Dionysius used its echo to overhear prisoners. Nearby is the Grotta dei Cordari, once used by rope makers, which reopened in 2021 after almost forty years of closure; check whether it is open on the day you visit.

The Altar of Hieron II and the Roman amphitheatre

The Ara di Ierone, or Altar of Hieron II, was the city’s monumental altar for public sacrifice. It measured about 198 metres long and nearly 23 metres wide, and is often called the largest altar known from the ancient world. Ancient writers spoke of 450 bulls sacrificed at a single festival. The Spanish quarried most of its upper parts for fortifications in the sixteenth century, so what remains is the long rock-cut base and the lower courses of masonry, seen from the path that runs beside it. Opposite, the Roman amphitheatre, partly cut from the rock, held gladiatorial games. Its date is debated: the park’s own description notes that some attribute it to Augustus and others to Septimius Severus.

How long do you need at the Neapolis Archaeological Park?

Allow two to three hours to see the theatre, the quarries and the Ear of Dionysius, and the altar and amphitheatre at a comfortable pace. The paths are mostly gravel and packed earth with some slopes and uneven steps, and shade is limited outside the quarry gardens, so a hat, water and sturdy shoes make a difference in the warmer months. Opening hours change with the season and with events, and which areas are open can vary while conservation work goes on, so check the Sicilian Region’s archaeological parks website before you go.

When are Greek plays staged in the theatre of Syracuse?

Classical plays are performed in the Greek theatre each year from spring into early summer, in a season run by the INDA foundation (Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico). The tradition began in April 1914 with Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and, apart from pauses during the two world wars, has continued ever since, for many decades every second year and now annually. Performances are in Italian and begin in the early evening. In the weeks of the season, the theatre is fitted with temporary seating and staging, and daytime visits to that part of the park may be affected, so check the park and INDA websites if seeing the theatre bare matters to you.

Is Ortigia easy to explore on foot?

Yes: Ortigia is small and largely level, and its main sights lie on a single walk of an hour or two without stops. Many streets in the historic centre are pedestrian or carry little traffic. The limestone paving in Piazza Duomo and the older lanes is polished smooth by centuries of feet and can be slippery after rain, so wear shoes with good grip. Cafés on the piazzas and along the seafront promenade make it easy to break the walk.

Where can you see the finds from ancient Syracuse?

The best collection is in the Paolo Orsi Regional Archaeological Museum, in the grounds of Villa Landolina on the mainland, a short distance from the Neapolis. Named after the archaeologist who excavated across south-eastern Sicily, it holds finds from prehistoric Sicily through the Greek colonies, including the marble Venus Landolina. The museum is not part of the tour programme, but it is worth considering if you have free time and a strong interest in the archaeology.

Syracuse on Days 6 and 7 of the tours

On both tours, Day 6 begins with an early ferry from Malta to Pozzallo on Sicily’s south coast. From there the group travels by coach to Noto, the UNESCO-listed Baroque town, to see sights such as the San Francesco Church, the Monastery of Santa Chiara and Palazzo Ducezio. Our guide to Noto and its Baroque streets covers the town in detail. After free time for lunch, the group continues to Syracuse. The rest of the day is free until the group meets for dinner at the hotel, which makes the first evening a good time for a walk on Ortigia.

Day 7 is a half-day tour of Syracuse: a visit to the Neapolis Archaeological Park, followed by the Ara di Ierone, the Great Altar of Syracuse. With the afternoon unscheduled, you can return to Ortigia or visit the museum. In the evening the group attends a traditional Opera dei Pupi, the Sicilian marionette theatre. UNESCO recognises this form of theatre, which emerged in Sicily in the early nineteenth century and draws its stories from medieval chivalric literature, as part of the world’s intangible cultural heritage.

Both tours are rated Level 3, Moderate to Challenging, with up to six hours of activity a day over varied terrain, and an Odyssey Program Leader travels with the group alongside local guides. From Syracuse the routes go west. On Day 8 the 12-day tour stops at Caltagirone’s ceramic-tiled staircase of Santa Maria del Monte before the Roman mosaics of the Villa Romana del Casale, while the 25-day tour goes straight to the villa. On Day 9 both visit the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento, and stop at Segesta on the way to Trapani. For the island as a whole, see our introduction to Sicily and our suggested route around Sicily.

Syracuse rewards the traveller who comes with some knowledge of its past, because almost everything you see is a layer over something older: a cathedral over a temple, a promenade over a sacred spring, a garden in a prison quarry. Our day-by-day guide to the Mediterranean islands route shows how the city fits between Malta and western Sicily. To see it with a Program Leader and local guides, in a small group of up to 16 travellers, look at the Mediterranean Islands of Malta, Sicily, Sardinia & Corsica or the shorter Malta & Sicily – Mediterranean Islands small group tour.