This morning, after a brief meeting with our tour leader to orient ourselves in Palermo, we got into the bus again to drive to the ancient site of Solunto. We passed through Bagheria, which used to be a village at some distance outside Palermo, but is now almost on its outskirts. It was an area which used to be popular with wealthy families for building their summer villas, so there are still some Baroque palazzi. One in particular was quite striking, with curved facade and imposing double staircase, but I failed to get my camera ready in time as we swept past.
Solunto was originally a Carthaginian settlement, founded in the 8th century BC on a small peninsula. In the 4th century BC it was resettled in a slightly different place, set high up on the top of a hill overlooking the original site. Later still, it was Hellenized and then it became Roman when it surrendered to Rome after the First Punic War. We were intending to look at the Hellenistic and Roman site, rather than the archaic one.
The site is wonderfully and dramatically located up a very steep hill, which gave our bus driver another opportunity to demonstrate his skill, as he negotiated the narrow hairpin bends while we oohed and aahed at the wonderful view down to the sea. After the bus dropped us, we looked briefly at the explanatory panels in the small Museum and then set off up a very steep hill to the town. The streets were paved, sometimes with large stones and sometimes with terracotta slabs, and the houses stretched up the steep hill on our left.
We walked up the street towards the Agora, looking at some of the houses on the way up.
We paused to look at an expensive house, which had a small colonnaded courtyard. Another house had a courtyard with a fountain in it and a pool to catch rainwater, which led directed to the cistern below the house. There were rooms with traces of mosaic or with frescos as well.
Some of the side streets were so steep they were in fact a street of steps - just like Hong Kong!
There was an archaic shrine part of the way up, so we assumed that the different populations might co-exist in the city.
We passed the Agora, which has a number of small recessed rooms at the back, possibly for storage. Beyond this is a huge cistern for rain water, very necessary on such a high place. The view from the top of the street was quite wonderful.
We paused to look at the Gymnasium and the theatre; the latter was quite ruined, in contrast to many of the others we have seen. Nearby was a small Odeon, and both it and the theatre were well placed to take advantage of that wonderful view.
When we descended the hill again, we went back into the museum to look at some of the finds. The museum was small, but had some beautiful things in it. One of the houses, referred to as 'The House of the Masks' contained these frescos from the Roman period.
This is meant to be a theatrical mask. The vibrant red colour is referred to as 'Pompeiian Red'.
There was a most beautiful statue, from one of the houses that also had some frescos.
The statue, from the 2nd century BC, is wonderfully well preserved. She is apparently supposed to be holding something called a 'rotulo', whatever that is. Whoever translated the label wasn't able to translate that into English, but it looks a bit like a rolled up scroll.
There were some other nice objects - like the 2nd century BC bathtub - but I'll spare you more bathroom pictures. The design did seem to have changed a bit though, in the two centuries since the last one I photographed.
The bus drove us back to Palermo for a brief walking tour. We started by driving past the harbour and were dropped beside Piazza Marina, which is a very busy and crowded street Market on a Sunday. We passed stalls full of antiques, progressing to second-hand things, including elderly radios, cassette players and even reel to reel tape recorders. I began to feel we should have a clear-out of our garage and come back with the results! These were followed by stalls of second hand books and records, and eventually we passed on to what I could only describe as mixed assorted tat.
There is a famous 150 year old fig tree at the corner of the square, which has become truly enormous. We did not have time to go into the Giardina Garibaldi in the centre of the square; but this hardly matters, as we need to go back to the area to go into the many churches we passed while walking. Wherever you look, you seem to be surrounded by Baroque buildings; many of them were shut today, but we may make some visits tomorrow afternoon or Tuesday, in time which has been designated as free for our own explorations. Many are hard to photograph on the outside because it is not possible to get far enough away from them to photograph the whole building. This is one I managed, Theatro Bellini, a lovely old building but now a Pizza shop.
I wish my photos could have done justice to the Piazza Pretoria, where there is an enormous and exuberant 16th century Florentine fountain simply smothered in gleaming white marble nude figures. It is, unfortunately, surrounded by very tall heavy railings, presumably, as my guide book says, 'to ward off excitable vandals'.
We ended up at Quattro Canti, the intersection of two main streets that date from the city's reconstruction in the 16th century. The Quattro Canti is the centre of the original medieval town, and is a Baroque crossroads.
You may notice that the corners are not really corners; they are concave. This is just one of the many 'over the top' buildings we passed as we walked around.
After our rather late lunch, we walked from here down one of the main streets, Via Maqueda, looking at the fading and sometimes decaying grandeur of the many palazzi which line it.
We also had many fascinating views up tiny crowded side streets, with balconies entirely shrouded in washing.
It took about an hour to walk back to our hotel - we should really have taken a taxi. We were back by 3.30, which was just as well, since the rain fell in loud torrents at around 4.
At 6.15, we had an interesting talk on the Mafia, and 90 minutes later went out to eat. We sat too late at the able again - I really need an early night!
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