Sicilian Greco-Roman Jewels

10/11  A DAY OF GRECO-ROMAN JEWELS

Alone in the car park, we woke to absolute quiet, missing the lapping sound of the ocean, and slogged out our 10BX.  One of the morning delights the kids describe is waking to the “click, click and whoosh” of us putting on the wee blue billy.  

Wanting to be the first at the gates, we packed ALL our IT gadgets in the backpack (having been ‘cased’ and ‘conned’ last night) and walked the small pocked road, lined by junk & trinket stalls not yet open, to the gates of Villa Romani di Casale.  We’ve trained ourselves to not expect much but were utterly blown away again & again by the breathtaking beauty, enormous size and extensive mosaics of this Imperial Roman villa.  Theory has it that Emperor Maximius Herculian had it built and decorated largely with slave aritsans in the 3C AD. An earthquake, landslide and flood covered it all over in the 1100s and it was only re-discovered in 1950.  It’s late discovery and the then emerging respect for ancient historical sites probably explain its incredible preservation.  Not much has been pilfered. 

Latrine

The detailed and almost intact mosaics cover the entire floor of about 3500m2.  Each room has a separate design from the massage palour (slaves carrying oils & perfumes), to the dressing room (ladies in waiting dressing the empress), to the great hunt (a story of animals of the world, their capture and shipping to Rome for Colloseum games), a parody of Rome’s Circus Maximus, the famous scantily dressed athletes or bikini girls, pictorial explanations of Greco-Roman mythical gods and Kel & Jen’s favourite, the room with the fruit mosaics. The whole place is in the process of being covered with mezzanine walkways overlooking the incredible art.

Buoyed by the magnificence of such intense history, we decided to drive to Agrigento, Valle Dei Tempi, another UNESCO site where amongst other things, a series of 5 massive Greek Doric temples stand majestically along a ridge displaying their grandeur and wealth to all those sailing the Mediterranean. 

We drove through artistically geometric crops of fruiting cacti, learning of their value as fences, an ingredient in a local breakfast specialty, the fruit itself, animal fodder, alcoholic beverages…. and plastic covered miles of kiwi, grapes, citron, olives and cereals.  

olive truck

Cacti

All the peripheral, unfinished building ugliness is buffered to some extent but nothing can obscure the revolting ever increasing height of garbage piles.  Apparently the Mafia controls litter collection. Why would you want to threaten public health, tourism and business in such a way? Sicily seems ripe for another plague.

Our plan was to park up and see the ruins the following morning but the light was perfect making the closest temple, visible from the car park, shine a most alluring gold.  

So in we went for a perfect & fantastic meander along a grand path of history.  A vigorous debate started about the construction of the columns - whether by laying of moulded bricks in a rose-like ring which were then plastered & marbled or whether by large blocks stacked on top of each other with central ‘pins’ of rock connecting & stabilizing them.  We’ll look it up!

We re-fueled with coffee and soupy hot chocolates and found ourselves electing to press on via the Scala dei Turchi (white limestone cliffs made so impossibly ugly by litter and the human stamp that we drove on further still into the night) and into the hills of Sciacca where we pulled into a run down campground in the dark.  The warmth of the Italian only speaking large owner with a mouth full of pizza and heart full of love together with the gaggle of stray cats at our feet seeking a feed, made up for it. The branches of soft pepper trees gently brushed Ed’s roof, their rhythm made more subtly complex by the delicate tinkling staccato of the dropping peppercorns.