SIRACUSA

We left early Saturday morning to travel through the Sicilian countryside to Siracusa. The weather was unsettled, but incredibly, we saw a good view of Mount Etna just as we spotted the mountaintop city of Enna just after Caltanissetta. The fields were golding up with the warm sunny weather and balers were busy cutting early hay. We arrived at our hotel, the Grand Hotel Villa Politi and we were suitably bowled over by its location! It is on the edge of a series of gorges, ravines, or deep holes, whatever you want to call the weathered limestone that is under and around the site of this grand old hotel. Built by Maria Teresa Laudien, an Austrian who was joined to a native Siracusan painter, Salvatore Politi in 1862, it is on the site of the ‘Latomie Cappuccini,’ the hiding place for Romans who used it for early Christian prayer groups and later, the home of Cappucine monks. Besides being pretty classy, they have a wonderful pool and I spent many happy moments there.
We were joined by an American Department of Defense English teacher from Illinois, Mary Ellen, who teaches at the Sigonella Naval Base here in Sicily. We went on to the famous Siracusa Greek theater performances of the classics. This is our third year in attendance for these plays that take place right where the Greek would have watched them! Siracusa was a major Greek city, not Sicilian or Italian, but part of Grecia Major. The Orestes cycle finished last year, so the Euripides plays that were performed were The Trojans and Hecuba, both tragedies involving the end of the House of Atreides after their loss in the Trojan war. My paraphrase of both plays is that the Trojans, after losing the war, continued suffering through a lot of innocent women and kids get killed afterward.