Duomo ★

The interior of the Duomo (cathedral) of Siracusa.

The cathedral of Siracusa (Syracuse), Sicily, is a recycled ancient Greek temple

The baroque facade on the cattedrale.The star of the oblong, cafe-lined Piazza del Duomo at Ortigia's center is the Duomo, a cathedral adapted by the Byzantines (and later the Normans) from a 5th-century BC Temple to Minerva.

The interior is marvelously simple, a honey-colored world of sacred quiet that feels about as close as stepping back in time and into an ancient temple as you're ever going to find.

To convert the Greek temple to a church was not all that hard. They simply carved archways into the cella (the sacred central chamber of the temple) to make it into a nave, and filled in between 19 giant Doric columns from the temple's peristyle—all a bit askew from a 1542 earthquake—to make the outer walls of the aisles. Awesome.

Columns from the ancient Greek Temple of Athena help make up the fabric of the cathedral walls.(You can also see these ancient columns embedded into the outer wall by looking down the left side of the church outside.)

Aside from Andrea Palma's 1728–54 baroque facade, the Duomo remains essentially medieval and plain (a baroquing of the interior was yanked off in the 1920s).

Look in the first chapel on the right for a baptismal font recycled from an ancient marble font resting on 13th-century bronze lions.

Along the left aisle there are four statues by the Gagini (three in between the second to fifth columns and a Madonna delle Neve up near the end of the aisle).

Santa Lucia alla Badia

At the south end of Piazza Duomo is the small baroque chruch of Santa Lucia alla Badia containing a large Burial of St. Lucy by baroque master of chiaroscuro Caravaggio.

Caravaggio had escaped prison on Malta in 1608 and landed here in Siracusa, where he painted this unfininhed work starring a local saint in order to drum up some cash.

Tips & links

Share this page

Search ReidsItaly.com