A smartly clad elderly woman scurries out of a narrow, dimly lit street, then threads her way across a bright piazza, dodging ice-cream cone eating young couples gazing intently at each other, not the ancient Temple of Minerva across the street.
Shop windows glow, cafes bustle, strains of music punctuated by roaring Vespas float through the warm evening air. There is a salty sea tang in the air, mixed with the heavy aroma of carmelizing sugar. This is the Ortigia district of Siracusa, the seaside Sicilian city that English speakers call Syracuse, and this is the sort of lively street scene we expect to find in Sicily on a summer night.
The scene might not be a surprise to the visitors, but it certainly is to the home team. Five years ago, the ice-cream eaters and the elegant woman resident would not have thought of coming to the Ortigia after dark. And where there is a desirable new place to stroll and dine can the boutique-keepers and the sightseers be far behind? This newest reason for visiting the Sicilian city of Siracusa happens to be 2, years old.
So, when we made a circular tour of Sicily, as increasingly large numbers of Americans seem to be doing, we stopped off in Siracusa and followed a guide around the archeological zone. The theater is flanked by quarries and an immense altar used for public sacrifices. We looked at the Roman amphitheater, illustrating that, like most of Sicily, Siracusa is a layer cake of history, stuffed with stony souvenirs of successive conquerors.
All the reasons we needed to justify a stopover were embodied in the Ortigia: history, architecture, ice cream and fun. The Ortigia is an island, linked to the city proper by causeways and ringed by a gray stone wall. Contemporary residents cannot seem to standardize on spelling its name Ortigia or Ortygia city documents use both , but they agree that it was here that the city of Siracusa was founded in B.
