Syracuse and Ortigia : Tour with App and 19 Audioguides

What's Included

Meeting and pickup

Itinerary

• 1

  This complex was born in the early centuries of Christianity, above a vast funerary area carved into the rock. Here the ancient city had already left a mark: originally it was a ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 2
  Maniace Castle

  This castle was founded between 1232 and 1240 by Frederick II of Swabia, a cultured, visionary emperor, fascinated by the order of the universe, astronomy and the harmony between rationality and spirit. It's not a minor detail: every wall you see has been... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  20 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 3

  You are about to enter a place that is not just a church, but a threshold. The Church of the Holy Spirit overlooks the sea of Ortigia as if it wanted to remind you that every authentic journey is always a dialogue between inside and outside, between what you see and what ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 4

  This church was born in the eighteenth century, in the midst of the great reconstruction after the earthquake of 1693. The date that is handed down is 1743. But as often happens in Syracuse, the true age of the place is not measured only in years : here the time is ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 5

  His story is a story of falls and rebirths. A women's monastery already existed here in the fifteenth century, but everything changed after the great earthquake of 1693, when Syracuse was deeply wounded. The church you see today was born from that wound: rebuilt between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, under the Guide of the architect Luciano Caracciolo, it became part of the ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 6
  Syracuse Cathedral

  You are walking on a ground that in the fifth century BC was home to the Temple of Athena, goddess of wisdom and protection. A temple so powerful that it crosses the centuries without being demolished, but absorbed, integrated, transfigured. When in the 7th century AD the building became a Christian church, the past was not erased: it was ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 7
  Fonte Aretusa

  This fresh water that flows a few meters from the sea was already sacred in Greek times. For the ancients it was not a curious Superstar, but a sign of the divine emerging from the earth. Here the water was not only used to quench thirst ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  10 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 8

  Lungomare Alfeo with Meditation “The Call of Alfeo”. You are walking along the Lungomare Alfeo, one of the oldest and thinnest places in Syracuse. Time doesn't run here: breathe. Every step you take rests on almost three thousand years of history, of civilizations that have looked at the same sea, with the same inner questions that perhaps you too bring ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  20 minutes • Admission ticket free
• 9

  You are in one of the most significant medieval palaces of Ortigia, now home to the Regional Gallery of Palazzo Bellomo. Its history begins between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, at a time when Syracuse was a crossroads of power, faith and trade. The palace takes its name from the Bellomo family, who transformed and expanded it, leaving visible traces of ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 10

  The palace was built on older structures, already in the fifteenth century, when Syracuse was a crossroads of civil and religious power. Over the centuries it has been the seat of the city Senate, the Queen's Chamber, a place of government and decision-making. After the great earthquake of 1693, which deeply wounded the city and the soul of eastern Sicily, this building, like many others, knew ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 11

  We are at the end of the fourteenth century. It is 1397 when a Syracusan noblewoman, Macciotta Mergulese, decided to build this house. It does so by engraving a Latin dedication on the stone : not for vanity, but to leave a trace. In a time when everything was fragile, stone became ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 12

  This building was born between 1629 and 1633, at a time when Syracuse felt the need to affirm order, stability, identity. It is attributed to Giovanni Vermexio, a cultured and attentive architect, and from the beginning it was thought of as ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 13
  Parco Archeologico della Neapolis

  Here, more than two thousand years ago, the life of the Greek Syracuse flowed intensely. This space, then outside the city walls, was a threshold: no longer an urban centre, not yet untouched nature. Perhaps that is why even today the Neapolis conveys a feeling of ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  20 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 14
  Piazza Archimede

  Piazza Archimede welcomes those who arrive with a subtle feeling of balance, as if here space and time have found a silent agreement. Its name recalls Archimedes, the great Syracuse scientist, symbol of harmony between rational mind and invisible laws of the universe. It is no coincidence that this square is a ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  20 minutes • Admission ticket free
• 15

  This shrine houses one of the oldest and most intense places of Sicilian Christianity: the tomb of Saint Lucia, a Syracusan martyr who lived between the third and fourth centuries after Christ. According to tradition, Lucy suffered martyrdom in 304 AD.C., during the persecutions of Emperor Diocletian. His body was laid to rest... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 16
  Temple of Apollo (Tempio di Apollo)

  The temple was built in the first decades of the sixth century BC and is considered the oldest Doric temple in Sicily. When the Greek colonists arrived in this land, they felt the need to consecrate space, to give a ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  15 minutes • Admission ticket not included
• 17

  Via Cavour was born as a noble residential axis between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the most influential families chose this stretch to build their homes. It was not a commercial street, nor a noisy passageway: it was a space designed for ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  20 minutes • Admission ticket free
• 18

  This street was born as the home of the workers, the artisans, the custodians of manual knowledge. Each stone tells the repeated, patient gesture of those who built not only to live, but to leave a trace ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  30 minutes • Admission ticket free
• 19

  Via Roma was born between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, during a period of profound transformation of Ortigia. It was designed as an elegant, orderly, almost solemn axis, to connect the center of civil and religious power with the ... Listen to the Full Audio Guide!

  20 minutes • Admission ticket free

Additional info

• Wheelchair accessible
• Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
• Service animals allowed
• Public transportation options are available nearby
• Transportation options are wheelchair accessible
• Suitable for all physical fitness levels

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