Syracuse, Ortigia and Neapolis

Catania, in the shadow of Mt Etna

We berthed at Catania, nestling in the brooding shadow of Mt Etna. A bus took us to Syracuse and the ironically named Neapolis (ie new city 734 BC)

Taking photos proved addictive, but what they show, doesn’t fully capture sunlight on stone nor the sense of mystery and awe as you wandered through something so old.

As you enter the park the first thing you see is the Latomia del Paradiso (Paradise Quarry). Now it is a peaceful and beautiful garden stroll. Three thousand years ago, it would have been noisy and very far from paradise.  Here slaves sweated and toiled, quarrying stone for the new city and its great public buildings. 

Dominating the quarry is a narrow cavern, 76 feet high, 214 feet deep and 25 feet wide. Caravaggio called it the ‘Ear of Dionysus’ because of its shape and acoustics. It once  housed slaves and another time 7000 prisoners from the war between Athens and Syracuse. 

If legend is to be believed,  Dionysus, the Tyrant of Syracuse, was able to hear the whispering of mutinous slaves via the cavern’s startling acoustics. We witnessed it ourselves when a bunch of European tourists burst into song: Ode to Joy. A rival bunch of tourists – French – counter-attacked and drowned them out with the Marseillaise

The Greek Theatre

Note the modern seating near the top. It is still a working theatre

as the modern stage in the picture below illustrates

Caves used as burial chambers surrounding the theatre. Best seats in the house for the dead.

Some believe Greek theatres were aligned to the constellation associated with the gods they were dedicated to. What’s more obvious is the fact they were built in hillsides,  using nature as a natural backdrop, not only enhancing the acoustics, but also allowing audiences greater visibility. The position of the sun and prevailing winds were also taken into account.  Theatres were often positioned near to the sea, where breezes  both cooled the spectators and amplified sound.

Stylised masks amplified sounds through their mouths. The exaggerated features allowed them to be seen from a distance

 The Ara di Gerone II

          A  monolithic sacrificial altar to Heiron II where up to 450 oxen could be killed at one time. 

 

 And of course, when the Romans came, so did the Amphitheatre, cannibalised for stone over the years.

 

Ortigia harbour and sea

Syracuse’s old town centre is connected to Syracuse by two small bridges. It’s a tiny island about a mile long but packed with historical interest and surrounded by a turquoise sea.

 

Ortigia was the nucleus of Syracuse, founded about 734 BC and eventually becoming the most important city in Magna Graecia. For a time, it dominated the Mediterranean, was home to Archimedes, and was visited by Plato. Later it struggled against Carthage until eventually swallowed up by the Roman Empire where it enjoyed renewed prosperity. In later years, Syracuse, along with the rest of Sicily was influenced by Byzantines, Arabs, and Normans.

Piazza del Duomo

Began life as a Greek temple, developed further by the Byzantines and then Normans and became what we see now in the C18^th. It houses palaces and churches and from it a spider-web of narrow, mysterious and beautiful streets

So, what remains of the temple?

 The Temple of Apollo

Dominating the square is the  Cathedral built in the C7^th on the site of a previous Greek temple, and it reflects the complexity of Sicily’s unique culture. On its side wall, you have the ancient Doric columns of the original Greek temple. Above, you can see Norman battlements reflecting their obsession with warfare and defence. And after the great earthquake of 1693, when much of the church was destroyed, it was rebuilt in the Baroque style  best seen from the front.

As you walk through the narrow streets,  you pass palaces and some glorious buildings. 

A palace front

And its more intimate courtyard

 

The Fountain of Diana

All this in an island it takes 15 mins to walk around

I felt sad leaving, compensated by the fact there was still more to come

Gibraltar has steps

I remember, in primary school, adopting a small cardboard Indian child, which I coloured in and placed on the bottom step of a large flight of stairs leading to Heaven. It was all in aid of the missions. We paid one penny a day and at the end of the week, we got to move our cardboard cut-out a step nearer to Heaven. Not a futile exercise. It taught me a lesson. The richer children got their adopted child to Heaven faster, some paying sixpence a time.

Since then, I’ve had mixed experience with steps. As I’ve aged, I’ve grown to loathe the damn things, some more than others. 

I remember trudging up Jacob’s Ladder—the 199 steps from Whitby up to St Mary’s Church at the top of the hill overlooking the town. These steps have been there since the C14^th. For me, it was less a religious experience than a homage to Dracula, but there was a point to the drudgery. At the top was an ancient Abbey, atmospheric graveyard and a view. 

Other than getting my cardboard cut-out to Heaven, the most pointless flight of stairs I’d climbed was in Quebec. We were exploring, trying to find our own way from the harbour to the historic quarter on the heights.

 This looked promising, we thought and dutifully climbed, only to discover they led nowhere, well nowhere significant. They allowed us a view of what looked like a library. 

Approaching Gibraltar * (see below)

Three weeks ago, we were in Gibraltar and again, decided to do our own thing, in this instance walk up to the Moorish castle and Botanical Gardens. It was well signposted but from there, things went downhill—or rather uphill.

 We must have walked up 20 flights of stone steps, perhaps more. Red faced and puffing we trudged upwards, stopping occasionally for the occasional photograph and catching our breath. Nearing what we hoped was the top, we turned a corner and met two people walking the steps we had yet to climb. Just two more flights, they said merrily, then a steep road, and you’re there. As an afterthought they added. ‘It costs £19 to get in.’ And then the killer: ‘Each.’

Sod that for a monkey, I thought. Scouse parsimony kicked in. After a moment's thought we  turned and walked back down again. And thus our day in Gibraltar was spent, me wishing I was a cardboard cut-out on its way to Heaven. 

Farewell Gibraltar 

Britain captured Gibraltar in 1704 during the war of the Spanish Succession, and acquired it permanently 

in 1713 after the treaty of Utrecht. This granted Britain full and permanent possession of the city, castle, 

port, defences and fortresses. Spain had previously held it for 203 years after seizing it from the Moors in 

1501. By my calculation, we have owned Gibraltar for 320 years. Possession, as they say, is nine tenths of the law.

In contrast, Spain relinquished Spanish Morocco in 1956 but retained a part of it: Ceuta, which it still 

holds to the disgust of Morocco. Ultimately might is right, and it is hard to get excited about, unless 

you’re Spain or Morocco, and perhaps Britain in the near future. 

 

Two Minutes of Hate

The Nudge Unit was established by David Cameron’s government in 2010 with the intention of applying ‘Behavioural Science’ to public policy. It came into its own during the Covid epidemic, which with full blown media support generated sufficient fear to allow an almost totalitarian government. It also encouraged a degree of well meant but lunatic hysteria.

The Thursday evening ritual of banging pots and pans for ‘our NHS’ was started by a Dutch lady, Annemarie Plas, living in London. The speed with which it was taken up not only reflects a generalised hysteria, but the power of the establishment and a compliant media. What the country experienced was less a nudge more a nuclear-powered elbow, involving ministers, politicians, and celebrities of every kind and encouraged by news bulletins with their selective interviews.

It was perhaps a straw in the wind.

It used to be said that ‘money makes the world go round,’ but when the money runs out, hate takes its place, and hate is now the fastest growing currency. Capitalism has always appreciated pitting one section of the exploited against the other: in the C19th, Irish immigrants sometimes scabbing for striking Welsh miners, undercutting wages in general; West Indians stepped up to the mark in the C20th. 

There is now, though, an added complication: the internet and social media. Hate has become democratised, whether it is foreign actors stirring up mischief or home-grown individual grievance-mongers with chips on their shoulders. We live in supermarkets of hate, trundling our trolleys through aisles of the stuff, Muslims, Jews, Trans-activists, Terfs, incels, Brexiteers, Remainers, Tory scum, Labour troughers, Trumpers, anti-Trumpers, all of them screaming their wares. 

On the one hand, it’s doing the establishment’s job for them, distracting and dividing, preventing any coherent opposition to the status quo. It is also anarchic and potentially dangerous and perhaps accounts for a new determination by the establishment to control the internet so that orthodoxy and only orthodoxy prevails. In other words, there should be only one ‘nudge unit’ — especially at a time when the western world for the first time feels threatened by external forces.

It was easier in the past, when hostile powers popped up one a time. England vs Spain. England vs France, the Dutch, later the Germans, and more recently Communism. You knew where you were, a common enemy, one you were encouraged to hate and fear—an art perfected in the C20th. 

Misinformation and propaganda reached new heights during the First World War, continued during the Vietnam war with ‘the domino theory’ that made the war necessary. The domino theory has been resurrected with the present Russo-Ukrainian conflict, ie should Russia prevail other European states will topple like dominoes. Hence the line must be drawn in Ukraine, marked with bodies over there and manufactured hatred for Russia over here. 

But it’s not just Russia. We now face the ‘Axis of Evil’ —the West is surrounded— Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, along with their proxies in the so called Third World. Which way do we turn? Will war make or break the economy? Is it the only way to burn our way through the coming recession?

When the ice-floe shrinks, the velvet glove becomes threadbare and the iron shows beneath. I’m reminded of Orwell’s 1984 and his famous ‘Two Minutes of Hate.’

“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through wthe whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”

Orwell’s Oceana faces a never-ending war with Eastasia and Eurasia, and all that Oceana’s citizens know about the world is what the Party want them to know. 

A Parable for Our Time

'The uninvited guest from an unremembered past'

 

This is part of a large installation made from dead organic materials meandering through the house.  To me it looks nothing more nor less than a gargantuan bowel movement, but I'm glad to be corrected. “These materials hold traces of memory, exploring ways of listening to past, present and future, inviting us to reflect on Tyntesfield’s history.” I’m trying to get my head around ‘listening’ to this. Is it accompanied by bowel movement sounds?

For all the ‘word salad’ interpretations, let’s not beat about the bush. This is poo oozing its way through the house. And why? The hapless Gibbs family—all four generations—owned no slaves so they can’t be ‘got’ at on that score. Their vast wealth was based upon imported guano (sea-bird poo) from South America. As they say, ‘there’s money in sh-t,’ but in fairness they invested in beauty. Judge for yourself.

House and chapel

Drive and entrance

Hall with hearth in distance

Hearth close up, its statues representing the four virtues. 

The rooms lend themselves to film and TV work and if you ever see Trollope’s Dr Thorne, Agatha Christie’s Crooked House, Dracula, The Famous Five, Sherlock (The Abominable Bride) and even Dr Who (Hide) you may recognise some of the rooms shown above and below.

A library to die for – well at least experience a slight cold.

The Games Room

The oratory, ie a room once dedicated to family and staff prayer. Now superseded by a grand victorian gothic chapel.

Hall, stairs and landing from different angles

The gothic corridor to the chapel

The family chapel. A modest affair

                                And an evocative exit from the chapel to the gardens outside.

 Tyntesfield reflects late Victorian gothic at its finest—an idyllic country retreat for a country gentleman with taste and a fortune from guano. Earlier representatives of the National Trust recognised its beauty and significance. It was saved for the nation in 2002 and a public appeal resulted in 77,000 people donating over £8 million in a 100 days. It also benefited from a grant of £17.4 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. The National Trust today sees guano. A parable for our times perhaps.