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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.
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