The apartment Wes rented happens to be someone's residence. Somewhat of a penthouse, it occupies the top floor of a building with about eight apartments. Only a few apartments have been renovated. The common area and the meandering stairway are a bit worn and crumbly. For a moment, I was concerned. Then, the apartment door opened onto a spectacular home, entirely camera ready for the top design magazines. The main living space, a large rectangle, was once three large rooms. Now, it is an open loft, about sixty feet long by twenty feet wide. The floor is paved with gleaming local brown marble. The ceilings are high and vaulted.
The windows are large and tall french doors with views past church tops and terra cotta roofs, to the sea. They open onto shallow patios large enough for potted plants and to hang laundry out to dry. Those patios look directly across the narrow street, about twelve feet, to the opposing apartment's windows. One day, as I hung wet laundry to dry, an older woman neighbor opened her window. We chatted for a few minutes. My limited, but enthusiastic Italian went over well. She concluded the conversation with a compliment, "tu hai denti bellissimi". You have beautiful teeth. Silly as it sounds, to wash then hang dry, outdoors, your laundry is to participate in a local, traditional cultural tradition. A popular song, "le simplici cose", the simple things, alludes to the repetitive, constant, daily ritual—done by the old and young and single and married and widowed, by grandmothers and soldiers and teenagers—of laundry. The rest of the apartment is renovated and furnished with the same great aesthetics and style and refinement. It felt like we were borrowing a friend's exquisite apartment. Another instance, as in Locorotondo and Lecce, of a rental that did not feel like a commercial transaction.
We settled in then went immediately exploring. Down the street, is an attractive corner shop called M.O.O.N. It stands for Move Ortigia Out of Normality. It is a bar, a caffè, a vegan ristorante, a community center, a focal point for it's roster of resident artists and a performance space. There is constant music. The waiter will sing Mozart arias. A duo will sing rockabilly with a string bass. Someone wanders to the piano and plays several Chopin ballades. One morning, we walked past the MOON and saw a woman making a violin. She is Giuseppa Modica, one of the resident artists. She plays the violin very well and even made the violin she plays. She studied violin making in Cremona, Italy, ground zero for the greatest violins on the planet. The next day, the MOON celebrated their anniversary with an open house. Giuseppa invited me to play duets with her. The viola I used was built by her partner, Giovanni Carazzol, also a fine violin and viola maker.
Another day, we got haircuts. The barber was older than us. His shop looked old. Three walls were covered with large mirrors in painted wooden frames. The mirror had that old look that occurs when the silver coating slightly pulls away from the glass. He used scissors. His snipping relaxed me. It had a steady rhythm. He seemed to focus on and cut each individual hair. Occasionally, he used a straight razor to glide over an unruly patch. It was scary to enter his shop. He seems a local beloved fixture. Constantly, people stopped into his door to say a respectful hello. His son was there, to keep him company. It seemed, if we stayed longer in town, we were now entitled to say hello each morning on the way to market.
We spent time at the open air food market. In four short streets, it inspires with exceptional edible things. The fruits are tiny orange-fleshed melons, sweet as can be. And apricots with rosy blush cheeks. Perfect strawberries and tiny teardrop shaped tomatoes, so sweet, more fruit than vegetable. Everything at the peak of perfection. There is a cheese shop which makes sandwiches in a unique way. You give them free reign—though, if you must, they will accept a like or dislike from you—to improvise on a long perfect bread roll. They will use baked, warm, creamy, fresh ricotta. Or buratta or scamorza (smoked mozzarella) or prosciutto or fresh marinated anchovies. They will drizzle fresh olive oil pressed from local trees. Their repertoire of seasonings is a scrape of lemon zest or a squeeze of lemon juice. The tiny fronds or little dice of fresh picked baby fennel. Sliced strips of tomatoes dried in the sun, chopped basil or mint or a shake oregano dried on it's stalk. Or they will chop olives that have already been marinated in all of the above. The sandwich is alive on your palate with zings of sweet, salty, creamy.
There are fish mongers, too. You would not want to be on their bad side. They are good with a huge cleaver. The cleaver is huge because the fish is huge. Like nothing I have ever seen. The blue fin tuna is fourteen feet long. It weighs one-thousand eight-hundred pounds. It's color is deep red. If you did not know what you were eating, you might think it was meat. It is more fleshy than flaky and not at all fishy. They catch it in an ancient way. The tuna is lured into a series of ever smaller nets. When it arrives into the smallest net it is wrangled into submission by men then brought directly to market where the men with cleavers expertly divide it into saleable parts. The swordfish is local, too, and an impressive sight. To be on the boat with the fishermen wrangling these giants of the sea would be an unforgettable experience. They also have smaller sea creatures. Gambero rosso, the sweet and large pink shrimp. And there are squid and octopus and clams and mussels and sea bream and branzino and anchovies and eels.
The perimeter of ORTIGIA can be walked in about an hour. One side has a scenic marina with a long wide stone paved boardwalk and a long double row of shade trees over benches. The water is blue and green gemstone colors. Around the bend, is a tiny swimmable beach. At the narrow tip is an ancient fort. It's massive stone walls rise out of the water like a ship. That area is off limits. It is a military site. The rest of the island is all of a piece. The buildings are very old. The streets are all narrow. Some neighborhoods are better than others in that some have been anointed as the districts that are best for spending the time, energy and money on building renovations. The lesser neighborhoods have outstanding buildings in near collapse. Those can be bought for very little money, but the challenge of restoration is too large so they sit with mature trees growing from the collapsed living room floor and through the crumbled terra cotta tiled roof.
The island's cathedral is wild. If it looks as if massive Greek pillars are trying to emerge through the walls it is because two-thousand six-hundred years ago the building was a Greek temple. The Roman's came and converted it into a Roman temple. Then, it became a fortress. Then, a catholic cathedral. Through it all, the columns stood. Then, an event often referred to occurred, the earthquake of sixteen ninety-three. The front of the building crumbled and was replaced with a massive and tall baroque facade. Today, the pillars still stand. Six across the front and the back. And twelve or fourteen from front to back on each side. The cathedral is at the center of the irregular shaped main piazza which is clad in white marble blocks. If ORTIGIA is the heart of SIRACUSA, the cathedral and piazza are the heart of ORTIGIA.
Back on the mainland, there are more Greek ruins. There are so many, the comprise a large park which is not well maintained. On our walk there, it was hot. The scirocco winds were blowing from north Africa. The bring blast furnace heat and fine sand. It made our walk a trial. The site has two star attractions. One is a Greek theater, twenty-six hundred years old theater. It is still in use for an annual festival of classic Greek plays. Situated under the theater is an unusual cave. The painter, Caravaggio, gave it a name. The Ear of Dionysius. The entrance is tall, like a fifteen story building, and shaped like Mr. Spock's ear, pointed at the top. The cave is shallow. You can walk the depth of it in two minutes. When you stand at the entrance, any sound you make is amplified and repeated at the rear of the cave.
ORTIGIA rates absolutely high on this trip's destinations. Waking up in a beautiful sunlit apartment and squeezing Sicilian oranges into juice. Then walking the circus of a food market and stopping for granita made from fresh almonds or fresh lemons. Eating a fresh cooked cannoli tube filled at point of sale with fresh sweet ricotta. Having a new barber friend and two new violin maker friends. ORTIGIA good. Molto, molto bene!
Wes and Marlow
Ortigia, Siracusa, Italy
May 20, 2016
We arrived into SIRACUSA by train and decided to walk to the rented apartment. The walk, though, was not long. From train to apartment was thirty minutes. It was a memorable transition. The day was warm. The car traffic zipped by. It did not make a "wow" impression. The cobble stone streets and stone side walks gave our bags a bumpy ride. Within minutes we arrived at a bridge, the Umbertino. A few steps away, on the other side, is the heart of SIRACUSA, the piccolo island of ORTIGIA. I will say at the outset, ORTIGIA appealed to us. The first thing you see, on the other side of the bridge, are the ruins of a Temple of Apollo. It was built two-thousand six-hundred years ago! (What have we built in our towns that will last that long?). The temple sits as the jewel in the crown of a sweet piazza. On one side are ancient stone apartment buildings. On another side are palm trees and the start of the street where the daily open-air food market occurs. The final side faces a promenade, of pomegranate trees, which leads to the water and the bridge we crossed.
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