Page 353 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

of scenes from the Old and New Testaments.

Section B
Elsewhere, eyes will possibly glaze over at the thousands of pottery shards, burial
urns, amphorae, statues, figures and temple fragments. However, section B does at

least put many of the finds into context, showing where excavations occurred in the
city, and even reconstructing useful models of the fallen temples. Among the earlier
Hellenic pieces, the museum has some excellent kouroi – toned, muscular youths, one
of which (from Lentini) is one of the most outstanding fragments still extant from the
Archaic age of Greek art – around 500 BC. A striking image from the colony of

Megara Hyblaea dates from the same period: a mother/goddess suckling twins, its
absorbed roundness expressing a tender harmony as close to earth and fertility rites as
the Venus Landolina is to the cult of sensuality.

Basilica di San Giovanni catacombs

Piazza San Giovanni • Daily 9.30am–12.30pm & 2.30–5.30pm • Tours depart every 30min • €8 • 0931 64 694,
kairos-web.com
Close to the Museo Archeologico, below the ruined Basilica di San Giovanni off Via
San Sebastiano, lies the most extensive series of catacombs in the city, their presence

explained by the Roman prohibition on Christian burial within the city limits (Siracusa
having by then shrunk back to its original core of Ortigia). Fronted by a triple arch,
most of the church was toppled in the 1693 earthquake and the nave is now open to the
sky, but you can still admire the seventh-century apse and a medieval rose window.
San Giovanni was once the city’s cathedral, built over the crypt of St Marcian, first
bishop of Siracusa, who was flogged to death in 254.

The tours take you down into the crypt to see Marcian’s tomb, the remnants of some
Byzantine frescoes and an altar that marks the spot where St Paul is supposed to have
preached, when he stopped in the city as a prisoner on his way to Rome. Then you’re
led into the catacombs themselves, labyrinthine warrens hewn out of the rock, though
often following the course of underground aqueducts, disused since Greek times.

Numerous side-passages lead off from the main gallery (decumanus maximus), often
culminating in rotonde, round caverns used for prayer; other passages are forbiddingly
dark and closed off to the public. Entire families were interred in the thousands of
niches hollowed out of these walls and floors, anxious for burial close to the tomb of
St Marcian. Most of the treasures buried with the bodies have been pillaged, though
the robbers overlooked one – an ornate Roman-era sarcophagus unearthed from just
below the floor in 1872 and now on show in the archeological museum.

Parco Archeologico della Neapolis
Viale Paradiso • Daily 9am–2hr before sunset • €10 • 0931 66 206 • Take any bus that goes up Corso Gelone, and