Syracuse
Stand at the edge of Ortygia and you are standing on the oldest continuously inhabited part of Sicily — one square kilometre of island that Corinthian colonists chose in 733 BC, expelled the Sicels from, and began building on without apparent hesitation. The Doric columns of the Temple of Apollo are still there, dark and salt-worn, rising from the pavement of a street where people park their scooters.
Syracuse once rivalled Athens. Archimedes was born here. Plato visited. Aeschylus staged plays in the Greek theatre that Hiero II had a hill carved out to create, and that theatre still runs productions today. The city carries all of this without making a fuss about it.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to gravitate toward the same ritual: an early walk through Piazza del Duomo before the tour groups arrive, when the elongated Baroque square is quiet and the cathedral facade catches the low morning light. The Duomo itself rewards a long look — the ancient Greek columns of the Temple of Athena are embedded in its walls, visible from inside.
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How Syracuse came to be
Archias led the Corinthian colonists ashore on Ortygia in 733 BC, and within a few generations Syracuse had grown into the most powerful Greek city in the western Mediterranean. Gelon, who seized control in 491 BC, defeated a Carthaginian army at Himera in 480 BC — the same year the Greeks held Thermopylae. Dionysius I pushed the city further still, building it into the best-fortified Greek city of its time and assembling the most powerful fleet in the Mediterranean before his death in 367 BC.
Rome took the city in 212 BC, losing Archimedes in the siege. Arabs captured it in 878 CE. The earthquake of 1693 levelled much of what remained, and the city rebuilt in the Sicilian Baroque that now defines Ortygia's streets and squares. Caravaggio was here in 1608, painting The Burial of Saint Lucy.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
Summers are long, dry, and genuinely hot — July and August temperatures regularly exceed 35°C, which makes the midday Archaeological Park a serious undertaking. April through June and September through October offer warm days, manageable crowds, and the best light for photography.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.