Sicily Sightseeing

a charming coastal town home to a massive Norman Cathedral with outstanding mosaics

Explore the lively Capo Market, a large open air street market that captures the flavor of Palermo’s Saracen Arab past. Capo is a blend of general confusion and a jumble of vendors’ stalls, winding toward the old gate –Porta Carini– of what used to be the city wall. Later visit the Piazza Pretoria and Via Maqueda, whose “four corners” converge Palermo at a quartet of baroque palaces left over from the heyday of Spanish rule dating from 1560.

See where the Arab-Norman art and architecture reached the pinnacle of its glory with the Duomo launched in 1174 by William II. The Monreale Cathedral is in a Romanesque style and is covered in Byzantine-style golden mosaics. The rich mosaics explain the faith. The images represent scenes from the Old and New Testaments.

One of the major cities of the ancient indigenous Elymian people, visit the unfinished Doric temple, late 5th century BC, built on a hilltop just outside of the ancient city and has a commanding view of the surrounding area.

Piazza Armerina is a small town of about 23.000 inhabitants, found between Enna and Gela. Piazza Armerina is Famous in the world for the Roman mosaics of Villa del Casale, the Aragonese castle has a beautiful baroque old city centre where Duomo occupies the highest position (721 mt), and everything about the ancient core, characterized by medieval narrows streets and beautiful Renaissance and Baroque palaces,::text like Trigona Palace. The old town center is full of rich culture including Churches, Palaces, Convents. Other feature of the town are the four Medieval Quarters.

On the other side of the valley is the last spur of the hill, commanded by the remains of the Temple of Vulcan. It is a Doric-style building from the 5th century BC, with an archaic sacellumm enclosed into a Classic-era cella. The sacellum measures 13.25 x 6.50 meters; its decoration, dating to c. 560-550 BC, has been recently reconstructed. The classic temple, a Doric perypteros, measured 43 x 20.85 meters, rising mounted on a four-step krepidoma and having 6 x 13 columns; it dates to around 430 BC.

This temple was constructed on a mostly artificial spur. It dates to c. 450 BC, measuring 38.15 x 16.90 m: it is in Doric style, peripteros 6 columns wide by 13 long, preceded by a pronaos and opisthodomos. The basement has four steps.
Current remains (including anastylosis from the 18th Century onwards) consist of the front colonnade with parts of the architrave and of the frieze. Only fragments of the other three sides survive, with few elements of the cella. The building was damaged in the fire of 406 BC and restored in Roman times, with the substitution of clay marble roof tiles with ones and the addition of a steep rise in the area where today can be seen the remains of the altar.
Nearby are arcosolia and other sepultures from Byzantine times, belonging to the late 6th century AD renovation of the Temple of Concordia into a Christian church.

The iconic Greek Doric Temple sits here with view of Mediterranean sea. Due to its good state of preservation, the Temple of Concordia is ranked amongst the most notable edifices of the Greek civilization existing today. It has a peristatis of 6 x 13 columns built over a basement of 39.44 x 16.91 m; each Doric column has twenty grooves and a slight entasis, and is surmounted by an architrave with triglyphs and metopes; also perfectly preserved are the tympani. The cella, preceded by a pronaos, is accessed by a single step; also existing are the pylons with the stairs which allowed to reach the roof and, over the cella's walls and in the blocks of the peristasis entablature, the holes for the wooden beam of the ceiling. The exterior and the interior of the temple were covered by polychrome stucco. The upper frame had gutters with lion-like protomes, while the roof was covered by marble tiles.
When the temple was turned into a church the entrance was moved to the rear, and the rear wall of the cella was destroyed. The spaces between the columns were closed, while 12 arched openings were created in the cella, in order to obtain a structure with one nave and two aisles. The pagan altar was destroyed and sacristies were carved out in the eastern corners. The sepultures visible inside and outside the temple date to the High Middle Age.

The traditional name of this temple comes from another mention by Cicero[2] about a temple dedicated to the classical hero "not far from the forum"; however, it has never been proven the latter (the agora of the Greek city) was located in this point.
Stylistically, the temple belongs to the last years of the 6th century BC. It has been also suggested that this temple was one of first built under Theron. Also the entablature, of which parts have been found, would date it to the 470-460s or the middle 5th century BC (though the more recent remains could be a replacement of the older ones). One hypothesis is that the temple was begun before the Battle of Himera, to be completed only in the following decades. Polyaenus mentions a temple of Athena being built under Theron outside the city, which could be identified with that of "Hercules", though also with a new one in the inner acropolis.
The building, with 20th-century anastylosis, measures 67 x 25.34 m, with a peristais of 6 x 15 Doric columns and a cella with pronaos and opysthodomus, is located over a three-step basement. It is the first example (later become common in the Agrigento temples) of pylons inserted between the pranos and cella, housing the stair which allowed inspections of the roof. The columns are rather high and have wide capitals. On the eastern side are remains of the large altar.

The Elymians settled the medieval town of Erice, which was an important religious site associated with the goddess Venus. Wander through its ancient streets and visit some of the famous homemade pastry shops—world-famous for marzipan candies and other delicacies::text like almond and pistachio pastries. Castle built on the remnants of Venus Temple

Noto, a lovely village parts of the UNESCO, famous for its honey colored buildings of the early eighteenth century. Noto is considered a masterpieces of the Sicilian Baroque style.

Visit Ortygia Island, the heart of the city center. Then visit the Archaeological Park. Highlights include the Greek Theatre, the Roman Amphitheatre and the Paradise Quarry

popular tourist destination since the 19th century. It has popular beaches (accessible via an aerial tramway) on the Ionian sea, which is remarkably warm and has a high salt content.