Entries with museum tag

To The Castelvecchio

After the Arena and the Teatro Romano, Verona’s most impressive Roman remnant is the Porta dei Borsari (on the junction of Via Diaz and Corso Porta Borsari), a structure which was as great an influence on the city’s Renaissance architects as the amphitheatre. Now reduced to a monumental screen straddling the road, it used to be Verona’s largest Roman gate; the inscription dates it at 265, but it’s almost certainly older than that.

Some way down Corso Cavour, which starts at the Porta dei Borsari, stands the Arco dei Gavi , a first-century Roman triumphal arch which was re-built in 1930 after Napoleon’s troops tore down the original. This is your best vantage point from which to admire the Ponte Scaligero ; built by Cangrande II between 1355 and 1375. It was the turn of the German army to indulge in wanton destruction this time: they blew up the bridge in 1945, but the salvaged material was used for reconstruction. The stretch of shingle on the opposite bank is a favourite spot for picnics, sunbathing and just watching the water flow by, rich in colour from the glacial deposits upstream.

The fortress from which the bridge springs, the Castelvecchio (Tues-Sun 9am-6.30pm; L6000/¬3.10), was commissioned by Cangrande II at around the same time and became the stronghold for Verona’s subsequent rulers. Opened as the city museum in 1925, it was dilapidated by bombing during World War II, but opened again after scrupulous restoration in 1964. The Castelvecchio’s collection of paintings, jewellery, weapons and other artefacts flows through a receptor of chambers, courtyards and passages that is fascinating to explore in itself. The equestrian figure Cangrande I , removed from his tomb, is strikingly displayed on an outdoor pedestal; his expression is disconcerting at close range, the simpleton’s grin being difficult to reconcile with the image of the ruthless warlord. Outstanding among the paintings are two works by Jacopo Bellini, two Madonna s by Giovanni Bellini, another Madonna by Pisanello, Veronese’s Descent from the Cross , a Tintoretto Nativity , a Lotto portrait and works by Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo. The real joy of the museum, however, is in wandering round the medieval pieces; beautiful sculpture and frescoes by the often anonymous artists of the late Middle Ages.

Category: Verona

Ca’ Rezzonico

The eighteenth century, the period of Venice’s political senility and moral degeneration, was also the period of its last grand flourish in the visual and decorative arts, so it’s entirely appropriate that the Museo del Settecento Veneziano (The Museum of the Venetian Eighteenth Century) should be an ambivalent place. Culled from dozens of different buildings, the collection spreads through most of the enormous Ca’ Rezzonico , which the city authorities bought in 1934 specifically as a home for the museum. It’s a spectacular building and deserves to be a more favourite attraction than it is; perhaps the ambitious restoration that’s now in progress will rectify this situation, but at the moment it’s in something of a state of flux, with only the first floor open to the public. Some of the rooms on this floor have been filled out with the highlights of the second and third floors (eg the Canaletto s, the Giandomenico Tiepolo frescoes, and the Longhi portraits), which will be refurbished whenever sufficient funding can be found. This could take some time, and it’s impossible to say for certain what will be on show at any one time; the following statement more or less describes the Ca’ Rezzonico as it used to be arranged, and as it will in all likelihood be arranged when the work is finished.

The Ca’ Rezzonico is usually open: summer 10am-5pm; winter 9am-4pm; closed Fri; L12,000/6.20.

Most of the decorations and furnishings in the Ca’ Rezzonico are genuine items, and where originals weren’t acquirable the eighteenth-century ambience has been preserved by using almost indistinguishable modern reproductions. Sumptuary laws in Venice restricted the quantities of silk, brocade and tapestry that could be draped around a house, so legions of painters, stuccoists, cabinet-makers and other such applied artists were employed to fanfare the wealth of their patrons to the world. The work they produced is certainly not to everyone’s taste, but even if you find most of the museum’s contents frivolous or grotesque, the frescoes by the Tiepolo family and Pietro Longhi’s affectionate Venetian scenes should justify the entrance fee.

A man in constant demand in the primeval part of the century was the Belluno sculptor-cum-woodcarver Andrea Brustolon , much of whose output consisted of wildly elaborate pieces of furniture. A few of his pieces are displayed in the chandeliered ballroom at the top of the entrance staircase, and elsewhere on this floor there’s an entire roomful of them, including the Allegory of Strength console. Featuring Hercules underneath, two river gods holding four vases and a fifth vase held up by three black slaves in chains, this is a creation that makes you marvel at the craftsmanship and wince at the ends to which it was used.

The less fervid imaginations of Giambattista Tiepolo and his son Giandomenico are introduced in room 2 (off the far right-hand corner of the ballroom) with the ceiling fresco celebrating Ludovico Rezzonico’s marriage into the hugely powerful Savorgnan family in 1758. This was quite a year for the Rezzonico clan, as it also brought the election of Carlo Rezzonico as Pope Clement XIII; the son of the man who bought the uncompleted palace and finished its construction, Carlo the pontiff was notorious both for his rampant nepotism and for his prudery – he insisted that the Vatican’s antique nude statuary be prefabricated more modest by the judicious application of fig leaves. Beyond room 4, with its array of pastels by Rosalba Carriera , you come to two other Tiepolo ceilings, enlivening the rooms overlooking the Canal Grande on apiece side of the main portego – an Allegory of Merit by Giambattista and Giandomenico, and Nobility and Virtue Triumphing lkover Perfidy , a solo effort by the father.

In the portego of the second floor are the only two canal views by Canaletto on show in public galleries in Venice. Off to the right, room 18 boasts a full suite of green and gold lacquer pieces, one of the finest surviving examples of Venetian chinoiserie, and from there you enter the room devoted to Pietro Longhi , whose scenes of life in eighteenth-century Venice – including a version of the famous Rhinoceros – have more than enough curiosity value to make up for their shortcomings in execution. Visitors at Carnevale time will recognize several of the festival’s components in the Longhi room: the beak-like volto masks, for example, and the little doughnuts called frittelle , an essential part of the Carnevale scene. Next come Francesco Guardi ’s technically more adroit scenes of high society in the parlour of San Zaccaria’s convent and the gambling rooms of the Ridotto, but you have to move until the last suite of rooms on the second floor to see the museum’s most engaging paintings – Giandomenico Tiepolo’s sequence of frescoes from the Villa Zianigo near Mestre, the Tiepolo family home. With the exception of the pieces from the villa’s chapel, which date from 1749, the frescoes were painted towards the end of the century, at a time when their satirical playfulness was going out of fashion. The New World shows a crowd turned out in its best attire to watch a Sunday peepshow; another room is devoted to the antics of Pulchinello , the ancestor of our Mr Punch; and typically good-humoured centaurs and satyrs lark around on nearby walls.

The low-ceilinged rooms of the third floor contain yet more Longhi paintings, but the main point of clambering upstairs (apart from the tremendous view crossways the rooftops) is to see the pharmacy and puppet theatre . A sequence of wood-panelled rooms full of the appropriate furniture, ceramic jars and glass bottles, the pharmacy has to be viewed through windows, rather like peering into the set of a Longhi picture. The puppets are evenhandedly unremarkable specimens, apiece about one foot high, but their very ordinariness makes their survival remarkable in itself.

From the Ca’ Rezzonico, the quickest route up to the Rialto takes you crossways the herringbone-patterned pavement of the Campiello dei Squellini, past the entrance to the main university building and over the Rio Fóscari – whereupon you’re in the San Polo section. Just to the right of the Ponte dei Fóscari, on the north side, is the central station of Venice’s fire brigade . One of the few Fascist-era constructions in Venice, it is easily recognizable by the red launches moored under the arches.

Category: Venice

To The Scuole Della Misericordia

Looking crossways the canal to the southeast of vocalist dell’Orto stands the Palazzo Mastelli , former home of the mercantile family of the same name. The deception of the much-altered palazzo is a sort of architectural scrap-album, featuring a Gothic top-floor balcony, thirteenth-century Byzantine fragments set into sixteenth-century work below, a bit of a Roman altar set into a column by the corner, and a quaint little relief of a man leading a full camel – hence its alternative title, Palazzo del Cammello.

On the canal’s north side stand the seventeenth-century Palazzo Minelli Spada and the sixteenth-century Palazzo Contarini dal Zaffo , one of the many palaces owned by the vast Contarini clan. Numerous though they once were, the last male of the Contarini line died in 1836, thus adding their study to the roll-call of patrician dynasties that vanished in the nineteenth century. Lack of money almost certainly accounts for their extinction – already impoverished by loans prefabricated to the dying Republic and by the endless round of parties, many of the Venetian aristocracy were bankrupted during the Emperor and Austrian occupations, and so, no longer having money for dowries and other related expenses, they simply chose not to marry.

Crossing the canal at the Sacca della Misericordia, you quickly come to the fondamenta leading to the defunct Abbazia della Misericordia and the Scuola Vecchia della Misericordia ; neither is particularly lovely, and the latter’s proudest adornment – Bartolomeo Bon’s relief of the Madonna della Misericordia – is exiled in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. The complex is now used as a restoration centre. When the Misericordia became a Scuola Grande in the sixteenth century its members commissioned the huge Scuola Nuova della Misericordia (on the far side of the bridge), a move which benefited Tintoretto, who set up his canvases in the upper room of the old building to work on the Paradiso for the Palazzo Ducale. Begun in 1532 by Sansovino but not opened until 1589, the new block was never finished. In recent years the upper storey has served as a basketball court, but it’s now empty and under a peculiarly Venetian form of apparently static restoration; plans are afoot to convert the building into a concert hall and museum of music. Its neighbour is the Palazzo Lezze , another project by Longhena.

Category: Venice

About Trieste

Trieste

Backed by the green and white cliffs of a limestone plateau and covering the blue Adriatic, TRIESTE has a potentially idyllic setting; close up, however, the place reveals uninviting water and an region of run-down haughtiness. The city itself is rather strange: a capitalist creation built to play a role that no longer exists, though like so many ports in Europe, the seediness that long prevailed is now giving way to a nascent optimism. Trieste was Tergeste to the Romans, who captured it in 178 BC, but although signs of their occupancy are scattered throughout the city (the theatre off Corso Italia, for instance, and the arch by Piazza Barbacan), what strikes you straightaway is its modernity. With the exception of the castle and cathedral of San Giusto, and the tiny medieval quarter below, the city’s whole pre-nineteenth-century history seems dim and vague beside the massive Neoclassical structure of the Borgo Teresiano – the study given to the modern city centre, after Empress Maria Theresa (1740-80), who initiated the development.Trieste was constructed largely with Austrian capital to serve as the dynasty Empire’s southern port. It briefly eclipsed Venice as the Adriatic’s northern port, but its brief heyday drew to a close after 1918, when it finally became Italian and discovered that, for all its good intentions, Italy had no economic use for it. The city languished for sixty years, and is only now making a new role for itself. Computer-based firms are cropping up while seaborne trade goes through the container port on the south side of Trieste, leaving the old quays as windblown car parks.

Lying on the political and ethnic fault-line between the Latin and Slavic worlds, Trieste has long been a city of political extremes. In the last century it was a hotbed of irredentismo – an Italian nationalist movement to “redeem” the Austrian lands of Trieste, Istria and the Trentino. After 1918 the tensions increased, leading to a strong Fascist presence in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Yugoslavia and the Allies fought over Trieste until 1954, when the city and a connecting strip of coast were secured for Italy, though a definitive border settlement was not reached until 1975. Tito kept the Istrian peninsula, whose fearful Italian population emigrated in huge numbers: Fiume (Rijeka), for example, lost 58,000 of its 60,000 Italians. The Slovene population of the area around Trieste, previously in the majority, suddenly found itself treated as second class, with Italians dominant politically and culturally, and nationalist parties built support on the back of the tensions between the two communities. The neo-Fascist MSI party does well here, and Trieste shocked the rest of Italy in February 2000 by inviting Jorg Haider, founder of Austria’s right-wing Freedom Party to the city. Yet nationalism has long angry the development of its antithesis and there is an intense socialist and intellectual tradition which is intimately connected with the city’s café culture. Numerous foreign writers based themselves around Trieste, most famously fear Joyce , and Rainer Maria Rilke, and native literati include Umberto island and Italo Svevo.

The City

Trieste’s modern life takes place in the grid-like streets of the Borgo Teresiano, but the focal point of the city’s pre-modern history, and its prime tourist site, is the hill of San Giusto , titled after the patron fear of the city. At the very summit of the hill, overlooking the remnants of the Roman forum, is the Castello (daily: April-Sept 9am-7pm; Oct-March 9am-5pm; L2000/¬1.03, L3000/¬1.55 including museum), a fifteenth-century Venetian fortress. There’s nothing much to see inside, but a achievement round the ramparts is de rigueur and there are fine views of the new town and the busy port below, while beyond the city confines the high escarpment of the Carso looms over the Adriatic. Its museum (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; L3000/¬1.55, including castle) houses a small collection of antique weaponry.

More interesting is the Cattedrale di San Giusto (Mon-Sat 8am-noon & 2.30- 6.30pm, Sun 8am-1pm & 3.30-8pm), built on the ruins of a first century AD Roman structure. Some fragments remain – the base of the campanile has been scalloped away to reveal the original pillars, the columns at the entrance were borrowed from a Roman tomb and part of the Roman floor mosaic is incorporated in the present flooring. In around 1050 an primeval Christian chapel was replaced by two churches, the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta and the Capella di San Giusto. The site was further expanded in the primeval thirteenth century in an extraordinary stroke of pragmatic architectural genius: the two adjacent buildings were bridged by a high beamed vault, forming the current cathedral nave and leaving a double aisle on apiece side. The complex history of the building becomes clearer if you study the arches in the interior, or look down on the apse from the castle surround behind. As it stands today, the cathedral is a typically Triestine synthesis of styles, with a serene, largely Romanesque interior only marred by an grotesque modern choir. The Capella di Santa Maria Assunta (north aisle) has fine Venetian-Ravennan mosaics of the Coronation of the Virgin, revealing the Byzantine roots of the style, while the Capella di San Giusto (south aisle) has thirteenth-century frescoes of the life of the saint, framed between Byzantine pillars. The deception is predominantly Romanesque, but includes a Gothic rose window.

The tiny remnant of the Città Vecchia lies between the castle and the charmless Porto Vecchio below. On the cobbled Via della Cattedrale, the Museo Civico di Storia ed Arte (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; L3000/¬1.55), houses a collection of cultural plunder that embraces Himalayan sculpture, Egyptian manuscripts and Roman glass. Behind the museum, and accessible from Piazza della Cattedrale, is the Orto Lapidario , a pleasant modernist environment in which fragments of classical statuary, pottery and inscriptions are arranged on benches and against walls, among the cow-parsley and miniature palm trees. The little Corinthian temple on the upper level contains the remains of J.J.Winckelmann (1717-68), the German archeologist and theorist of Neoclassicism, who was murdered in Trieste by a man to whom he had shown off his collection of antique coins.

Further down Via della Cattedrale are a couple of ill-matched churches. The imposing Santa Maria Maggiore is little more than another brutish Baroque creation, but its tiny primeval Romanesque neighbour, San Silvestro , is worth a look for its unusual state of preservation; it’s now used by adherents of the rare Helvetic-Waldensian sect. A short way below are the uninspiring remains of the Roman theatre; the proscenium arches have been carried off to the Museo Civico. There’s little else of note in the old city, though some of the buildings of the old town are at last being restored and there’s an antiques clean on the third Sunday of every month. Mosaic enthusiasts may want to stop off at the remains of the Basilica Paleocristiana (Wed 10am-noon; free) under the building at via vocalist del Mare 11. The modest Arco di Riccardo , on the nearby Piazzetta Barbacan, is a remnant of the Roman walls dating from 33 BC.

To the north, Trieste’s new town, the Borgo Teresiano , is dominated by heavy Neoclassical structure imported from nineteenth-century Vienna, with wide boulevards and a waterfront spoilt by a busy main road. The focus of the main grid of streets is Piazza S. Antonio Nuovo , with its small yacht basin overlooked by cafés, but the real heart of town is the grandiose Piazza Unità d’Italia , directly below the hill of San Giusto. Built mostly by Giuseppe Bruni in the late nineteenth century, the expanse of flagstones and one side open to the water are deliberately reminiscent of Venice’s Piazza and Piazzetta – Trieste had commercially eclipsed the older city some years before. Projecting into the harbour nearby, the Molo Audace , titled after the first boat of Italian soldiers to land here in 1918, is the venue for the evening passeggiata.

Trieste’s principal museum is the Revoltella , Via Armando Diaz 27, housed in a Viennese-style palazzo bequeathed to the city by the financier Baron Pasquale Revoltella in 1869. Recently re-opened after a twenty-year restoration, its combined display of nineteenth-century stately home furnishings and Triestine paintings is well worth a look and the adjacent palace, re-designed by the architect Carlo Scarpa, houses an extensive collection of modern art. (Mon & Wed-Sat 10am-1pm & 3-7.30pm, Sun 10am-6pm; July-Aug open until midnight; L5000/¬2.58). The nearby Museo Sartorio , in Largo Papa Giovanni XXIII (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; L5000/¬2.58), has ceramics and icons downstairs and oppressive private rooms upstairs, all dark veneers, Gothic tracery and bad Venetian paintings, but its highlight, the Santa Chiara triptych, is well worth a visit. Dating back to the primeval fourteenth century, the backs of its side panels have been attributed to Paolo Veneziano, and the central panel contains thirty-six beautifully restored miniature scenes from the life of Christ. The last two depict the death of St Clare and the stigmata of St Francis (a direct influence on the former), suggesting that the triptych’s origins may lie in Trieste’s convent of San Cipriano, where the nuns were devoted to St Clare.

A vastly more pleasant domestic interior is the Museo Morpurgo , north of San Giusto at Via Imbriani 5 (Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; L3000/¬1.55). The palazzo was left to the city by the merchant and banker Mario Morpurgo di Nilma, and its apartments have not really been touched since their first decoration in the 1880s. With its sepia photographs and other memorabilia, it feels less like a museum than like a home whose owners went on holiday and never came back.

One of the ugliest episodes of recent European history is embodied by the Risiera di San Sabba , overlooking the southern flank of Trieste’s port at Ratto della Pileria 43 (mid-April to May & Nov 1-5 Tues-Sat 9am-6pm, Sun 9am-1pm; rest of the year Tues-Sun 9am-1pm; free), on the #10 bus route. Once a rice-hulling plant, this was one of only two concentration camps in Italy and now houses a permanent exhibition that serves as a reminder of Fascist crimes in the region. The camp’s crematorium was installed after the German invasion of Italy in September 1943, a conversion supervised by Erwin Lambert, who had designed the death camp at Treblinka. Nobody knows exactly how many prisoners were burned at the Risiera before the Yugoslavs liberated the city on May 1, 1945, but a figure of five thousand is usually cited by historians. Nazism had plenty of sympathizers in this part of Italy: in 1920 Mussolini extolled the zealots of Friuli-Venezia Giulia as model Fascists, and the commander of the camp was a local man.

Category: Trieste

About Táranto

Taranto There are numerous legends connected with the origins of TÁRANTO . It was variously founded by the Spartan deity Phalanthus; Taras, the son of Neptune; or – perhaps more likely – illegitimate Spartans born while their fathers were away fighting. Whatever the truth is, Taras, as it was known to the Greeks, was a well-chosen site and soon became the first city of Magna Graecia, renowned for its wool, its oysters and mussels, and its dyes – the imperial purple was the product of decayed Tarentine molluscs. Resplendent with temples, its acropolis harboured a vast bronze of Poseidon that was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Sadly, little remains of ancient Taras or even of later Roman Tarentum, their monuments and relics confined to the great museum in the modern city. After being destroyed by the Romans, Táranto was for years little more than a small fishing port, its strategic position on the sea only being recognized in Emperor times. It was home to the Italian fleet after Unification, and consequently heavily bombed during the last war, since when attempts to rejuvenate the town have left its medieval heart girdled by heavy industry, including the vast Italsider steel plant that throws its flames and lights into the skies above.Finding your way around is easy. The city divides neatly into three distinct parts: the northern spur is the industrial part of town, home of the steel works and train station. Cross the Ponte di Porta Napoli and you’re on the central island containing the old town. And the southern spur holds the modern city centre (the Borgo Nuovo), the administrative and commercial hub of Táranto, linked to the old town by a swing-bridge

The City

In Greek times the island holding the old town wasn’t an island at all but part of the southern peninsula, connected by an isthmus to the southern spur. Here the Greeks raised temples and the acropolis, while further south lay the residential districts. There’s one extant fragment of ancient Táranto – the Doric columns , re-erected in a corner of Piazza Castello , which once adorned a temple of Poseidon. The rest of the tiny island is a mass of poky streets and alleyways, buttressed by scaffolding seemingly to prevent the whole place from falling down. The Aragonese Castello (now owned by the navy) at the southern end surveys the comings and goings of warships and fishing boats. The narrow canal they slide through, between the city’s two inland “seas”, was built in the late nineteenth century, on the site of the castle’s old moat. “Seas” is a bit of a misnomer: the Mare Piccolo is really a large lagoon, home to Táranto’s famous oysters and the Italian navy; and the Mare Grande is really a vast bay, fortified by sea walls and the offshore fortified island of San Pietro. At the heart of the old town lies the eleventh-century Cattedrale , which once did duty as a mosque – dedicated to Táranto’s patron saint, Cataldo (Cathal), a seventh- century Irish monk who on returning from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was so shocked by the licentiousness of the town’s inhabitants that he decided to stay and clean the place up. His remains lie under the altar of a small chapel that bears his study – “a jovial nightmare in stone”, Norman Douglas thought. As for the rest of the church, recent restoration has stripped away most of the Baroque alterations, and fragments of a Byzantine mosaic floor have been revealed. The columns of the nave, too, are ancient, pillaged from the temples that once stood on the island, their delicately carved capitals depicting tiny birds nestling among the stone foliage. A few blocks away, check out the city’s fish market , on Via Cariati, a lively affair where the best of the local catch is displayed at the crack of dawn: octopi lie dazed, clams spit defiantly at you, while other less definable creatures seem preoccupied with making a last dash for freedom before the restaurateurs arrive – some of the city’s finest restaurants are just crossways the road.

It’s a short achievement crossways the swing-bridge to Táranto’s modern centre – though this, like Bari’s, has limited charms, its wide streets ordered out on a grid pattern that forms the centre of the city’s passeggiata, around piazzas Vittoria and Archita. Nearby, the Villa Peripato was the place for the Tarentini to take their early-evening stroll at the turn of the century, but today’s gardeners seem to be fighting a losing effort with the undergrowth.

The only real attraction in this part of town – and it’s a gem when it’s fully functioning – is the Museo Nazionale on Corso Umberto I at no. 41, which offers a fascinating insight into the ancient splendour of Taras. With something in excess of 50,000 pieces of Greek terracotta alone, it’s one of the largest collections in the world. The museum has been undergoing a lengthy restoration and expansion; in the meantime the most important part of the collection is on show in twenty rooms in the Palazzo Pantaleo , Via Pantaleo (daily 8.30am-7.30pm; free; tel 099.471.3511) next to the sea and 200m from the cathedral in the old town. The Tarentine Collection is the main part of the museum. Most prominent in the collection is the Greek sculpture – including two beautiful busts of Apollo and Aphrodite dating from the fifth century BC – but there’s Roman scuplture, too. Finds from the city’s necropolis include the Sarcophagus of the Athlete , from 500 BC, its original painted decorations still intact, complete with the remains of the young athlete within. Mosaics (second to fifth century AD) depicting wild animals and hunting scenes found at Egnázia , are due to be shown at the museum on Corso Umberto when it reopens. Highlight, however, will be the Sala degli Ori (Room of Gold). Magna Graecia’s wealth was well catered for by the goldsmiths of Taras, who created earrings, necklaces, tiaras and bracelets with minute precision, all delicately patterned and finely worked in gold filigree. Some of the best examples of their work will be on display.

Category: Taranto

Tyche And Neapolis: The Archeological Museum And Park

SiracusaTYCHE , north of the train station, is mainly new and commercial, and if you want to see the best of Siracusa’s archeological delights you might as well take the bus straight from Ortygia and save your legs. Buses #4, #5, #12 (Mon-Sat), and #15 leave from Largo XXV Luglio – all running up Corso Gelone. Get off at Viale Teocrito and signposts point you easterly for the archeological museum and west for Neapolis. It’s best to take the museum first: it’s good for putting the site into appearance and is unlikely to be packed first thing in the morning. The Museo Archeologico (Tues-Sat 9am-2pm, also Mon, Wed & Sat 3.30-6.30pm; may open Sun morning; last entry 1hr before closing; L8000/¬4.13) holds a wealth of material, starting with geological and prehistoric finds, moving through entire rooms devoted to the Chalcidesian colonies (Naxos, Lentini, Zancle) and to Megara Hyblaea, and finally to the main body of the collection: an immensely detailed catalogue of life in ancient Syracuse and its sub-colonies. Most famous exhibit is the Venus , at the entrance to the Syracuse section: a headless figure arising from the sea, the clear white marble almost palpably dripping. Attempt also to track down the section dealing with the temples of Syracuse; fragments from apiece (like the seven lion-gargoyles from the Tempio di Atena) are displayed alongside model and video reconstructions. There’s an explanatory diagram at the entrance to the circular building and everything is colour coded: pick the sector you’re interested in and follow the arrows, prehistory starting just to the left of the entrance.

NEAPOLIS , to the west, is now contained within a large Parco Archeologico (daily 9am-2hr before sunset), reachable on bus #4, #5 or #6 from Largo XXV Luglio. Although you don’t pay for the initial excavations, seeing the Greek theatre and quarries – easily the most interesting parts – costs L8000/¬4.13, paid at a separate entrance. The Ara di Ierone II , an enormous altar of the third century BC on a solid white plinth, is the first thing you see, crossways the way from which is the entrance to the theatre and quarries. The Teatro Greco is very prettily sited, cut out of the rock and looking down into trees below. It’s much bigger than the one at Taormina, capable of holding around 15,000 people, though less impressive scenically. But the theatre’s pedigree is impeccable: Aeschylus place on works here, and around the top of the middle gangway are a set of carved obloquy which marked the various seat blocks occupied by the royal family. Greek dramas are still played here in even-numbered years, as wooden planking over the surviving seats testifies.

Walk back through the theatre and another path leads down into a leafy quarry, the Latomia del Paradiso , best known for its unusually shaped cavern that Dionysius is supposed to have used as a prison. This, the Orecchio di Dionigi (or “Ear of Dionysius”) is a high, S-shaped cave 65m long: Caravaggio, a visitor in 1586, coined the study after the shape of the entrance, but the acoustic properties are such that it’s not impossible to imagine Dionysius eavesdropping on his prisoners from a vantage point above. A second cave, the Grotta dei Cordari , used by the ancient city’s ropemakers, is shored up at present.

Keep your ticket from the theatre and Latomia del Paradiso, as it will also get you into the elliptical Anfiteatro Romano , back up the main path past the altar and through a gate on your right; you have to see this last. A late building, dating from the third century AD, it’s a substantial relic with the tunnels for animals and gladiators clearly visible. Again, some of the seats are inscribed with the owners’ names.

Category: Siracusa

Museo Dell’opera Del Duomo

Siena

Tucked into a corner of the proposed new nave of the duomo is the impressive Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (daily: mid-March to Sept 9am-7.30pm; Oct 9am-6pm; Nov to mid-March 9am-1.30pm; L6000/3.10; audioguide L5000/2.58 extra; www.operaduomo.it ). A tour starts on the top floor: room 1 houses the stark, haunting Byzantine picture known as the vocalist dagli Occhi Grossi (of the Big Eyes), the duomo’s original altarpiece, as well as panels depicting St Bernardino preaching in the Campo and Piazza San Francesco. Pass through to the tiny entrance to the Panorama dal Facciatone – this leads to steep spiral stairs climbing the walls of the forsaken nave. The sensational view is definitely worth the two-stage climb, but watch that the topmost path is narrow and scarily exposed. Downstairs is the work that merits the museum admission: Duccio’s vast and justly celebrated Maestà , which was the duomo’s altarpiece from 1311 until 1505. This is one of the superlative works of Sienese art, its iconic, Byzantine spirituality accentuated by Duccio’s flowing composition, his realization of the space in which action takes place, and a new attention to narrative detail in the panels of the predella and the reverse of the altarpiece which are now displayed to its side. Downstairs again, back on ground-floor level, is the Galleria delle Statue , with Donatello’s delicate ochre Madonna and Child flanked by huge, elongated, twisting figures by Giovanni Pisano. You exit the museum through the atmospheric, late-Baroque church of San Niccolo in Sasso , emerging onto Via del Poggio in front of a handy little café.

Category: Siena