POSTCARD FROM ORTIGIA, SICILY
Flavors and Knowledge
FOTO {The facade of San Giovanni Battista in Syracuse, Sicily, Image Attribution WP}
Hello friends:
Recently I was in Sicily leading a culinary tour, and on our last day, we walked through the beautiful island of Ortigia, connected to Siracusa’s main territory. Because of my distant blood connection with the Sephardic Jews in Italy, I am always pleasantly intrigued and constantly seek Jewish history and places wherever I travel. So here is a condensed 30 minutes walk through the old Ortigia Giudecca District.
Siracusa was one of the first cities in eastern Sicily to welcome Jews. However, the situation changed in late 1492 when all of the Sicilian Jews were forced to leave the island after the long coexistence: between one and three thousand Jews left Siracusa, out of the overall population of 12-14 thousand and the entire Giudecca District on the Island of Ortigia was left empty. In the Akradina District, the graveyard and the underground burial chambers containing inscriptions and oil lamps decorated with the menorah are all left.
The Giudecca (the Jewish quarter)is a quadrilateral area bordered to the west by Via della Giudecca, to the south by Via Larga, by the sea to the east, and crisscrossed by parallel streets: Via dell Olivo, Vicolos I II, III, and IV Giudecca, Vicolo dell’Arco and Via Minniti. It has retained the same network of streets ever since: low-rise buildings with one or two stories at most, the hospital, the ritual baths, and the synagogue (where the church of San Giovanni Battista now stands), known by the Arab name Mesquita.
The medieval cemetery was on a plot near Porto Piccolo (the Small Port) the Bishop of Cefalù rented. After the expulsion, the tombstones were used to build the fortifications of the strait separating Ortigia from the main island. They came to light when they were demolished in the late twentieth century. Researchers found four tombstones in the Regional Gallery at Palazzo Bellomo’s courtyard located on Via Capodieci, 14-16.
Others were placed together with those found at sea in the 1950s, fifteen in total – now in terrible conditions- and placed along the pathway leading into the catacombs of Vigna Cassia. The Paolo Orsi Regional Archaeological Museum, located on Viale Teocrito 66, has showcased tombstone inscriptions, oil lamps with menorah magic, and metal plates in the Jewish style.
For information and visit: http://www.regione.sicilia.it/beniculturali/palazzobellomo/info.html).
http://www.regione.sicilia.it/beniculturali/museopaoloorsi/infoENG.htm)
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