Page 352 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

south in Piazza della Vittoria.

Museo del Papiro
Viale Teocrito 66 • Tues–Sun 9am–2pm • €2 • 0931 22 100, museodelpapiro.it

Across the main Viale Teocrito from the Madonna delle Lacrime, next to the
archeological museum grounds, the small Museo del Papiro is worth a visit to see

papyrus art, ancient and modern, including models of boats and even sandals made of
the stuff. Ever since papyrus was introduced to Siracusa in the reign of Hieron II,
there’s been a thriving papyrus industry here, and gift shops on Ortigia are awash with
it.

Museo Archeologico

Via Teocrito 66 • Tues–Sat 9am–6pm, Sun 9am–1pm; • last entry 1hr before closing • €8, combined ticket with
Parco Archeologico €13 • 0931 489 511
If you have any interest at all in the archeological finds made in this extraordinary city,
then all roads lead to Siracusa’s Museo Archeologico. It was purpose-built for

Sicily’s most wide-ranging collection of antiquities, and it’s certainly worth seeing,
though there are caveats. It’s often extremely confusing to find your way around, with
notes in English either nonexistent or mind-numbingly detailed and academic, and to
cap it all sections are sometimes closed as continuing renovations attempt to address
its organizational shortcomings. The museum is basically split into four sections:

prehistoric (section A); items from Syracuse, Megara Hyblaea and the Chalcidinian
colonies (B); finds from Gela, Agrigento, Syracuse’s subcolonies and the indigenous
Sikel centres (C); and Greek and Roman Siracusa (D).

Section D

It’s section D that’s the easiest to understand, where Siracusa in the Greek and
Roman age is laid bare in an extraordinary series of tomb finds and public statues,
none more celebrated than the statue of Venus Anadiomene, also known as Landolina
after the archeologist who discovered her in 1804. Anadiomene means “rising from
the sea”, which describes her coy pose: with her left hand she holds a robe, while

studs show where her broken-off right arm came across to hide her breasts. Probably
Roman-made in the first century AD, from a Greek model, the headless statue has
always evoked extreme responses, alternately exalting the delicacy and naturalism of
the carving, and condemning her knowing sensual attitude that symbolized the decline
of the vigorous classical age and the birth of a new decadence. By the statue’s feet, the
dolphin, Aphrodite’s emblem, is the only sign that this was a goddess. Of the tomb

finds, pride of place is given to the superb Sarcofago di Adelfia, a finely worked
fourth-century marble tomb found in the catacombs below San Giovanni. It held the
wife of a Roman official, the couple prominently depicted and surrounded by reliefs