Most Recent Visit: June 2017. Like many of the cities in eastern Sicily, the second largest city on the island, Catania, has its origin in one of the Greek colonies in that part of the island. The exact date of founding is unknown, but it is believed to be around 729 BCE when Chalcidian colonists…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. The area around the modern city of Taormina, and ancient Tauromenium, seems to have been originally inhabited by the native Siculi people, who may have even dwelt on the site of Taormina. A few kilometers down the coast, though, in 735 BCE, the Greek colony of Naxos was founded. Naxos…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. In the scheme of the ancient settlements of Sicily, Tyndaris (also referred to as Tyndarion in antiquity) was a relatively new city, being founded in the early 4th century BCE. Located on top of a hill at the location of the small modern town that bears its name, Tindari, ancient…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. I had originally wanted to include the Villa Romana di Patti as part of my post on Tyndaris, as the proximity and travel route of the two complement each other well (Patti works as a good base for seeing Tyndaris, and so visiting works well before or after). My post…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. About 11 kilometers to the east of the modern town of Termini Imerese are the remains of ancient Himera. After a crushing Carthaginian defeat at Himera at the hands of the combined forces of Gelon of Syracuse and Theron of Akragas in 480 BCE ended the First Sicilian War between…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. Located about 15 kilometers west of Palermo, on a low plateau of Monte Catalfano, are the remains of the town of Soluntum (also called Solus or Soloeis during Punic control). Like nearby Panormus and Motya, Soluntum seems to have been founded by Phoenician traders prior to the end of the…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. Continued From Panormus Part I In the central part of the city, at Piazza Olivella 24, is the Museo Archaeologico Regionale ‘Antonino Salinas’. Along with the museums in Agrigento and Syracuse, the museum here is one of the primary collections of archaeological material on the island. With the exception of…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. Now the bustling capital of the Sicily region, Palermo can trace its humble beginnings back to its founding as a Phoenician colony in 743 BCE by merchants from Tyre. Coinage suggests that the Phoenician name for the settlement was Machanath, a Phoenician word for a camp or a place of…
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Most Recent Visit: June 2017. Nestled in a cool valley about three kilometers to the southwest of the modern town of Piazza Armerina is the Villa Romana del Casale, a large and extravagantly decorated villa. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the villa is world-renowned for the roughly 3,500 square meters of surviving mosaic flooring, though…
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Continued From Agrigentum Part I Adjacent to the museum, to the east, is the Hellenistic-Roman Quarter of Agrigentum; several urban insulae dating to the Roman rule over the city. Most of what remains here are a total of about 20 domestic structures that seem to date to the late Republican and early imperial age. Both…
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