Page 426 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

couple of hundred years later the city was in decline, and was soon abandoned

altogether.

The agora and the teatro

Heading left into the site from the main entrance leads directly to Morgantina’s most
distinctive ruin, the agora, bounded by three stepped sides that served as seats for
public meetings. The small teatro to its right was built in the third century BC, but

reconstructed in Roman times. Concerts, Greek plays and modern drama are
sometimes held here in the summer – you can get more information from the tourist
offices in Enna or Piazza Armerina.

The santuario and Fornace Grande

Other buildings here include a fourth-century BC santuario of Demeter and Kore,
while on the level ground behind the agora is a granary and square slaughterhouse,

beyond which stretches the 100m-long east stoa. A great kiln, the Fornace Grande,
is one of the biggest ancient kilns ever excavated, and probably produced heavy-duty
roof tiles, massive storage jars and the like. Further up the hillside in the residential
quarter stand the ruins of some Hellenic houses, with two mosaic floors. One, the
“House of Ganymede”, has an illustration of the youth Ganymede being carried away

to Olympus by Zeus’s eagle to become the cupbearer of the gods.

The west hill

There’s an awful lot more of the site to explore, though in summer the heat might
dissuade you. A path leads up to excavations on the west hill, which, though less
revealing, include the fairly substantial remains of houses, roads and walls in what
was another large residential area. In recent years, the remains of a second temple and
a spring and aqueduct have also been unearthed.

< Back to Enna and the interior

Caltagirone

Around 35km southeast of Piazza Armerina, CALTAGIRONE is a curious place.
One of the most ancient of Sicilian towns, it was settled well before the arrival of the
Greeks, and has an Arabic name (from kalat, “castle” and gerun, “caves”), yet an
overwhelmingly Baroque aspect, dating from the dramatic rebuilding after the 1693

earthquake that flattened the area. The Arabs, though, had one extraordinary and
lasting influence on the town, introducing local ceramic craftsmen to the glazed
polychromatic colours – in particular, blues and yellows – that subsequently became
typically Sicilian in execution. Until the great earthquake, the town supported a
population of around 20,000, of whom perhaps five percent were actively engaged in