Catania
Picturesque and noisy, Catania is the city of the volcano. Dark and closed like a grumpy god, Etna dominates from on high the continual comings and goings which enliven the city's streets, which symbolise an intrinsic caracteristic of the people of Catania: their being hard workers. This was a quality which was noted by Bartels, a German scholar who visited Sicily in 1786 and defined Catania "acity of active people who put ruins back up and look courageously to the future". It is also a quality which has allowed this city to resurrect several times from its own ashes like a phoenix, ignoring earthquakes and wars - ancient and modern. Highly suited to the people of Catania are the symbol of the city, the elephant, a good and strong animal, and their saint, Agatha, a virgin and martyr even capable of halting the fury of Etna with the supernatural force of her veil. Catania is a dark city, built with black volcano stone and yet absolutely sunny and luminous, on account of its 2528 hours of sun per year - the highest average in Italy. It is an ancient city, boasting of pre-Greek origins, yet sometimes more or less indifferent to its past, so much so that the Greek Theatre is almost hidden, at the end of a little street. A city of frivolous people, devoted to gossip like in Brancati's plays, but at once painfully aware of the tragic reality of life, of the need to roll up their sleeves against the mafia and other criminals who submerge their city with cement and corruption. Katane was founded on the fuming ruins of a siculo burgh by Chalcidian settlers in 729 B.C. Its name means "hill", and indeed the acropolis was built on a hill, in the area now occupied by the big Benedectine monastery. In the course of time, around it there rose temples, a hippodrome, a gymnasium, the mint, an odeon, aqueducts and thermae. In 476 B.C. Jeron of Syracuse conquered the prosperous town. He deported the inhabitants to Leontonoi, re-populated the town with people from Syracuse and new Doric settlers and gave it name "Etna". However, the people of Katane were only in exile for 15 years: in 461 they got their town back and bave it back its former name, and swore eternal hostility to Syracuse. In 415 they allowed the Athenians to use their town as a base in the war against Syracuse and this brought new destruction to it: having defeated his enemies, Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, turned his anger on Katane, leaving it at the mercy of his soldiers. In 263 B.C. Katane was taken by the Romans and declared a colony. Under the emperor Augustus, its population greatly increased, and it was embellished with prestigious new buildings (like the grandiose amphitheatre) while others were restored. In the course of the ensuing centuries Catania followed the vicissitudes of all Sicily, though its destiny was a little different from that of the rest of the island because of its peculiar intimate rapport with the volcano. The history of the city was linked not only to human affairs but also of death and destruction. One could list various dates: 1169, when a major earthquake caused the death of some 15,000 people; 1669, when the lava got as far as the harbour and fell hissing into the sea, leaving nothing but despair behind it, 1693, when the whole city was wipend out by the earthquake, which buried in the ruins some 16.000 innocents. However, the latter date also brought happier things with it. In the last years of the seventeenth century there was busy reconstruction, whose finest fruits are still the city's boast. A visit to Catania takes two days. Artistic heritage The Elephant Fountain- Placed at the centre of Piazza Duomo, it was done by Giovan Battista Vaccarini. It comprises an elephant in lava stone from the Roman epoch and an Egyptian obelisk in Syene granite with hieroglyphics regarding the worship of Isis. In a peculiar combination of sacred and profane, the elephant holds up theobelisk, which is surmounted by a ball and the insignia of St. Agatha: the cross, the lily, the palm and the angelic table. Tha elephant, like the tortoise, is often represented as an animal holding up the world and it is considered a cosmic animal in that its body contains the structure of the cosmos: four pillars holding up a sphere. The Cathedral of St. Agatha- Built in 1078-93 over the thermae of Achilles, from that epoch it preserves the three apses and the body of the upper transept. It was later rebuilt by Girolamo Palazzotto after the 1693 eartquake, with materials coming from other buildings like for example the Roman columns inthe main facade, done by Vaccarini, who took over thirty years to complete them. Scholars consider the facade too rigid with respect to the irradiation of the columns. The marble balustrade is from nineteenth century and it there alternate vases and statues and saints. Inside the cathedral there are the tombs of Vincenzo Bellini and of Aragonese Kings, including Frederick II, and of Costance of Aragona, the wife of Frederick III. In the right wall a very ornate portal closes off the chapel where there are kept the relics and treasure of St. Agatha, the patron saint of city. There are celebrations for the saint for over a month, from 5 Jannary to 12 February, but the climax of the feast is on 3-4-5 February, when the bier with the relics of the saint is taken round the city. Ursino Castle- The castle was built at the behest of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen in 1239-50 and now houses the municipal museum. Once surrounded by the sea, in the fourteenth century it was the residence of the Aragonese royal family; transformed in accordance with Renaissance taste in the sixteenth century, it was surrounded by lava in the 1669 eruption and hence now stands on the mainland. The edifice has a square layout with four cylindrical towers, only two of which are left, halfway along each side. Similar to the Castel del Monte castle in Apulia, Ursino castle blends together Hohenstaufen rationalism and the Arab taste for stereometry. On the pointed arch over the entrance there is an aedicule with the Hohenstaufen eagle seizing a hare. The museum, in which there is also the Benedictine collection, part of that of the princes of Biscari and the donations of Baron Zappalà-Asmuto, is at present being restored, and so it is only possible to visit the entrance and courtyard of the castle. The Roman Theatre and Odeon -The theatre had a diameter of about 87 metres and could seat 7000 people. It was built on a side of the hill on which there was the Greek acropolis, and we cannot fule out the possibility that originally it was actually founded by the Greeks. The orchestra, which has a diameter of 29 metres and a mable slab floor, is often flooded by the waters of the river Amenano. Under the present pit there are traces of two other distinct pits; they all date from the imperial Roman age. Adjacent to it is the Odeon, only recently reopened to the public, which was used for choir rehearsals and competitions and could seat 1300 spectators. The space between the pit and the external wall was divided into seventeen rooms, sixteen of which are left. Badia di Sant'Agatha church- Done by Giovan Battista Vaccarini in 1735-67. It stands in Via Raddusa with an elegant facade, the openings in which have frames in white calcareous stone. Convex in the interior part, the construction resolves itself into a concave shape higher up, with great balance. It is surmounted by a cupola which optically harmonises the surrounding buildings. Inside, all the surfaces are in white stucco, on which there stand out the altars in yellow Castronovo marble. The floor shows a rich design with fascias interwoven with big flowers and volutes in white marble on a grey background. Palazzo Biscari- Done by Francesco Battaglia, it is a magnificent example of the Catania Baroque. The facade, which looks out on the harbour, is classical and shows a rectangular terrace. The portal leads into a courtyard dominated by a pincer staircase tyoical of Baroque villas in the Palermo area too; the south side is the oldest, probably done on a project by Alonzo Di Benedetto, while the parts to the east were done on a project by Giuseppe Palazzotto in 1750. The interior was completed in 1766. One is struck above all by the party room, which according to Blunt is the freest expression of rococo decaration in Sicily. It has the shape of an elongated octagon terminating in an alcove, which is believed originally to have contained a "lit de parade". At the centre of the concave ceiling there is an oval skylight, through which the eye runs to an outer cupola, decorated with an allegorical fresco, that takes light from windows under the level the inner cupola; a gallery goes round the skylight and here, during balls, the orchestra was seated. The rocailles decoration was probably done by stucco workes from Venice or Bavaria; the fresco are by Sebastiano Lo Monaco. In the gallery on the marina there is a winding staircase also showing the Catania rococo style. Via Crociferi- It starts from Piazza San Francesco d'Assisi, passing under the arch of St. Benedict (1704). This is one of the most significant areas for the Catania baroque. It owes its name to a religious order who looked after the sick. Most of the buildings in Via Crociferi were done on projects by Vaccarini or close collaborators of his like Giuseppe Palazzotto and, instead of aligning themselves to the perspective axis of the street, they "compose" the street. Particularly worthy of attention are the Jesuit College with the adjacent San Francesco Borgia, San Giuliano and San Benedetto churches. Saverio Fiducia, letting Via Crociferi speak in the first person, writes: "Then celestial music rained down from the choir lofts and choirs on the bent backs of the devout, and the smoke of incense, coming out of the grandiose marble portals, wrapped me too in a scented atmosphere, rising sweetly towards the fastigia silvered by the moon.... The San Nicolò l'Arena Benedictine monastery.- Around 1136 some Benedictine fathers retreated to meditate on Etna and founded the san Leo monastery with the help of Count Errico. However, inclement weather, eruptions and earthquakes forced the monks to go down to Nicolosi to the San Nicolò monastery (still standing, private property, it is a state of abandon) which was originally built for sick monks. Since the situation there was not much better and there was the threat of thieves, around 1550 they decided to move to Catania and the monastery was built, the second biggest in Europe, which now houses the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy.After the 1693 earthquake, which had almost completely destroyed the church and the monastery, work was done, among others, by Antonino Amato, Francesco Battaglia and Vaccarini. After the Baroque portal and the courtyard, a pincer-shaped staircase of honour leads into the building. You thus come to the corridors organised along the two cloisters. The first one, with a neo-Gothic church, like the second one has doors and big windows done on a design by Antonino Amato. You get to the second cloister along the clock corridor; it has a 1606 marble portico, and, at the centre, the remains of a seventeenth-century marble fountain. In the west wing of the monastery there are the united civic and Recupero libraries: opened in 1897, they are made up of the original nucleus of 50,000 volumes of the library of the Benedictine fathers, to which there were added the libraries of the suppressed religious corporations, the one donated by Baron Ursino Recupero (made up of about 40,000 volumes and booklets, it is a precious collection for local and Sicilian history), that of the poet Mario Rapisardi and a Sicilian newspaper library. Roman amphitheatre- What remains of this magnificent edifice, probably dating from the second century B.C., is on one side of Piazza Stesicoro, along which it originally extended as far as what is now Via Penninello. It could seat 16,000 and was 31 metres high. The lower corridor is well preserved all along, and the arena, second only to that of the Coliseum in Rome, had a diameter of 71 metres. One notes a curious mixture of building materials- basalt, calcareous stone and red bricks - conferring a particular variety of collators on the building.