Siracusa

We spent a couple days in Syracuse under beautiful blue skies learning about the rich history of Syracuse.

Syracuse is about 2700 years old, and while a modest size city today, in antiquity it was one of the largest and most important city-states in the world. In 500 BC, it was actually larger than Athens, and was a melting pot of Greco-Roman people and cultures.

All around Syracuse are evidence and ruins of the Greeks that first occupied the city state.

On this trip Ryan has become a HUGE Greek mythology buff. She has read the entire Percy Jackson series, as well as kids versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as many other books on Greek gods & history. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of Greek mythology now, and as you know, she has BIG opinions and feelings.

In the Piazza Duomo in the old town of Sicily (called Ortigia) is this Cathedral.

It was built on top of the remains of a 5th century BC temple of Athena that the Greeks had built. You can see the original temple's Doric columns on the side of the cathedral, with the facade, walls, and medieval ramparts along the top of the building.

And you can see them inside, as well.

While we thought this was really cool, we noticed Ryan was having a very strong negative reaction to seeing this. Her favorite Greek god is Athena, and she was offended that the Christians would build on top of her beautiful temple. This led to one of the great conversations of the trip, talking about the various civilizations that have developed throughout Europe in the last 2500 years, how/why religious sites get repurposed, what those different people believed, and whether it's good or bad to preserve things in this way. It was a pretty amazing conversation to have with a 10 year old!

Oh, and we got a picture with pi, because Archimedes was from Syracuse and he figured out pi.

See, we really are doing math on this trip!

Finally, here is a little pan shot of the Piazza Duomo in Ortigia with it's beautiful, mainly Baroque architecture.