GREEK THEATER OF SYRACUSE

The Greek Theater of Syracuse is today the most famous monument of the city, but also in antiquity it had great international fame and prestige being the most important building for shows of the Greek-western world, very high example of civil architecture. It was also a place of worship and large popular assemblies, the site of public trials and, in Roman times, it was also adapted for circus and variety exhibitions.
Almost forgotten in the Middle Ages, in the following centuries the theater was the object of transformations, robberies, damages and removals that today only leave visible its huge footprint carved in the rock that fascinated travelers and artists from the 1700s to the mid-1800s. It still recalls every year hundreds of thousands of visitors who want to admire the majesty or who want to attend the classical theatrical performances that take place between spring and summer.
Archaeologists have studied it since the 1800s but the theater continues to be still a fertile place for research and studies for archaeological science. Its history begins in the Archaic period: the base of a temple discovered on the terrace overlooking the theater from the north can be dated to the end of the 6th century BC C .. In the third century BC the theater adapts to the constructive principles of the architecture of the Greek-Eastern world, wisely exploiting the conformation of the Temenite hill where it is placed and perfectly combining the architectural values ​​with those of the landscape. Giuseppe Voza, one of the great contemporary archaeologists who has dedicated so much of his activity to the theater, maintains that it shows how it was Syracuse that transmitted the principles of Hellenistic architecture to the Roman world.

ROMAN AMPHITHEATER

The Roman Amphitheater, of elliptical shape, has considerable dimensions (140 meters x 90), it is completely excavated in the rock, except in the south side. In the sixteenth century the Spaniards used the large square blocks that characterized it to build the defense bastions of the island of Ortigia.

ARA OF HIERON II

Inside the Archaeological Park of Neapolis, to the west of the Roman Amphitheater, is the Altar of Hieron II (3rd century BC), dedicated to Jupiter Liberator (Zeus Eleutherios), in honor of which the feast of Eleutheria was celebrated, with the sacrifice of 450 bulls at a time. It is a grandiose monument with two entrances, to the south and to the north the latter was once flanked by two Telamons, of which only the feet of the one on the right remain. Only the base remains of the building because it was demolished in the 16th century by the Spaniards.

LATOMIE

They are located near the Greek theater, the best known is that of the Paradise which leads to the Ear of Dionysus, an artificial cave surrounded by lush, funnel-shaped vegetation, dug into the limestone, about 23 meters high and 5 to 11 meters wide with a singular form, vaguely similar to an auricle, which develops in depth for 65 meters. The cave has exceptional acoustic properties (sounds are amplified up to 16 times). These acoustic characteristics and the shape induced Caravaggio, who visited Syracuse in 1608, to call it the Ear of Dionysius, giving strength to the sixteenth-century legend according to which the famous tyrant Dionysius had built this cave as a prison and locked his prisoners there to listen, from an opening from above, the words magnified by the echo.