Agrigento: The Valley Of The Temples (1)

It took the best part of a day to travel by slow, provincial train from Noto to Agrigento. Worse still I had a hangover, as it had been my lovingpartner's birthday the night before, which we'd celebrated with a very fine meal, but far too many limoncellos ...

First the train crawled through a flat landscape of grassland and cereal fields. Then it became hillier and more interesting - lots of citrus and vines, all in little plots. Though many of these orchards and vineyards were covered in unsightly, white plastic sheeting - presumably to protect against the pigeons, of which there were vast flocks ...

Finally we arrived at Agrigento. It's famous for its Greek ruins - some of the best outside Greece. But let's leave that till tomorrow. For now we had to drag our cases up the Via Atenea to the most delighful B&B you could ever hope to find. This was the view from our breakfast terrace (painted, I think, by the lady owner, who was Portuguese) ...

And this is my own photo of it ...

The next day, before entering The Valley of the Temples, we spent a couple of hours in the Archaeological Museum, where there were many beautiful vases ...

Whispering On Stone: A Short Piece of Oral And Aural History

Sicily's southeast has always been one of the island's wealthiest and most turbulently historic regions. In Siracusa's Parco Archeológico you can see the remains of Classical Neapolis, including the Anfiteatro Romano, the Roman amphitheatre. Here gladiators confronted other gladiators, criminals and wild animals in bloody combat. The tank in the centre was probably there to drain blood and gore; and after the contests the ill and infirm would suck warm blood from the animals, and retrieve their livers, in the belief this would aid their recovery...

The wealth of Baroque times (as always historically, of course, this meant wealth only for the few) can easily be appreciated in the grand, golden buildings of Siracusa and Noto. Fanciful curves and curlicues, and extravagant, imaginative designs, and 'showing off' in general, were features of the Baroque ...

Caravaggio (one of the greatest painters of the Baroque era, and one of my own favourite artists, and one of Bob Dylan's too) observed that this cave in the quarry-garden of Siracusa's Latomia del Paradiso bore a striking resemblance to the human ear. Mmm, I think I can see what he meant...

You won't be surprised to learn that this cave is now known as the 'Ear', or the Orecchio di Dionisio, the Ear of Dionysius - though this name derives from an older story about the tyrant, Dionysius, who supposedly liked to eavesdrop on the conversations of suspected conspirators there. For the cavern has astonishing acoustic qualities - a little like the Whispering Gallery in St Paul's Cathedral. We tested this out and found that our muted mutterings close to the wall echoed spookily, reverberating round and round the rocky chamber ...

My favourite place, however, in the Parco Archeologicó was the tiny church of San Nicolò, which was by-passed by most visitors swarming to the more grandiose sites ...