Segesta

Wine tasting and eating were not the only things we did in Sicily (although they did take up a lot of our time). We also visited a number of sites that reflect Siciliy's fantastic history as the crossroads of civilizations. Given its position right in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, you can imagine that many peoples came across Sicily with its fertile soil and decided to settle there. In fact, during the time the Greeks were on Sicily, its main city, Siracusa (on the eastern coast) was actually the largest city in the Greek world -- even larger than Athens.

All of these ancient civilizations mean lots of ruins. So, like in Ireland, we spent a lot of time looking at piles of rocks, although these rocks were far more "classic." Our first stop in this regard was Segesta (seh-JESS-tah) in the northwestern part of the country. Segesta was a settlement of the Elymian people, about whom very little is actually known. However, on Sicily, it is known that the Elymians intermingled with the Greeks and adopted their culture.

There are two major things to see at Segesta: an unfinished Doric-style Greek temple built around 420 B.C.E., and a small theater, which has been restored using many of the original stones. The temple is considered relatively small for Greek temples at the time, but it is impressive nonetheless:

The theater, which sits on a hill above the temple is in a beautiful location:

It is not that large, but the best part is the acoustics. There is a point on the stage where the acoustics are so perfect that when you whisper, anyone in the theater can hear what you say. and when you speak in a normal voice, it sounds like your voice is in your own head. We found the spot and we tried this with some other tourists who were impressed. It is beyond cool. They asked Shana to sing, but thankfully she only hummed a few bars from "A Chorus Line," which we had just seen in Madrid. Pretty cool technology from the Greeks who used a combination of geometry and architecture to achieve this effect.

Finally, walking down the hill from the theater gave us a fantastic view of the temple and a bit of the surrounding area:

All-in-all, Segesta was a really interesting site at which to start our sightseeing in Sicily.

Ciao,

Jeff and Shana