A week visiting the classical sites and churches of Sicily

The garden at Saint George’s Church, Taormina, offers views of the Sicilian coast and the Ionian Sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

A week in Sicily at the height of summer came to an end by taking the local bus up the hill to Taormina, high above Giardini Naxos, to attend the Sung Sunday Eucharist in Saint George’s Anglican Church.

It was a busy week, based in Recanati, on the outskirts of Giardini Naxos which stands on the site of Naxos, the earliest Greek settlement in Sicily. There were visits to the lofty hill town of Taormina, high above Giardini Naxos, to the classical sites in Syracuse, to Noto with its grand baroque architecture, beach walks and a climb up the slopes of Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano on the European continent.

Enjoying the beach at Recanati, near Giardini Naxos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Climbing the slopes of Mount Etna, Europe’s highest active volcano (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Classical writers say Naxos was the first Greek colony in Sicily. It was founded by colonists from Chalcis in Euboea and the island of Naxos in the Cyclades in 735 BC, a year before Syracuse was founded.

Naxos was the first Greek settlement on the island of Sicily (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Syracuse later replaced Naxos as the most important Greek centre in Sicily. Archimedes, who had his Eureka moment in his bath there, was born and died in Syracuse, Aeschylus saw his last plays, Prometheus Bound and Prometheus Released, staged in the Greek Theatre in Syracuse, Sappho and Pindar were visitors, Plato taught there, and the Apostle Paul stopped in Syracuse for three days on his way from Malta to Rome.

Little remains of the original site of Naxos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Naxos remained an important centre of Greek civilisation and culture in Sicily until constant wars and invasions forced the people of Naxos to move up the hill to Taormina. There the Teatro Greco or classical theatre is one of the most celebrated sites in Sicily because of its remarkable preservation and its beautiful location.

It is the second largest classical theatre in Sicily, after that of Syracuse, and is still used frequently for operatic and theatrical performances and for concerts.

Churches in Taormina

The Greek theatre in Taormina is one of the most celebrated sites in Sicily because of its remarkable preservation and its beautiful location (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015; click on image to enlarge)

The Duomo or cathedral in Taormina, which looks like a mighty fortress, was built around 1400 or even earlier on the ruins of a smaller mediaeval church. It was rebuilt in the 15th and 17th centuries and restored in the 1700s. However, there are older churches in Taormina. The Church of San Pancrazio, named after the patron saint of Taormina, was built with material from the sanctuary of Isis and Serapis, dating from the Hellenistic period.

Saint George’s Anglican Church in the centre of Taormina is a much newer church. It is close to the bus station, the cable car and all the main attractions, and the Eucharist is celebrated there in English every Sunday.

Saint George’s is a stone church with spectacular panoramic views from its windows and from the terrace in the green garden behind the church that looks out across the Ionian Sea. The church is below street level but a banner on the wall and the attractive stone arch makes it easy to find the way in.

I was warmly welcomed to Saint George’s by the verger, Salvatore Galeano, who took over the role from his father in 2000. It is a family tradition, and before Salvatore, both his mother and his grandfather had been vergers.

English-speaking visitors

The Greek Theatre in Syracuse, where Aeschylus saw his last plays staged (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015; click on image to enlarge)

English-speaking people were among the first foreigners to come and stay in Sicily from the 17th century on as Europeans developed a renewed interest in the art and history of the Greek and Roman world. Some of these English-speaking families settled in Sicily, mainly in Palermo and Taormina.

The Dublin-born singer, composer and theatre manager, Michael Kelly (1762-1826), was an early Irish visitor to Taormina. He was a friend of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and of Mozart, and he first visited Sicily in 1780. He became one of the first singers of his time from either Britain or Ireland to make a front-rank reputation in Italy.

The British presence in Sicily was boosted in 1799 when King Ferdinand IV donated the Castle of Maniace to Admiral Nelson, after the King of Naples fled to Palermo on Nelson’s ship. The large estate granted to Nelson as Duke of Bronte included the Villa Falconara in Taormina, which remained a home to Nelson’s heirs until the mid-1950s. The family also played a key role in founding Saint George’s Church.

Sicily and Sardinia were the only parts of Italy that Napoleon never conquered, and as Napoleon advanced though Italy, King Ferdinand and the Bourbon court fled revolutionary Naples in 1799. They were brought to safety in Sicily by Admiral Horatio Nelson on his ship. Also on board were Sir William Hamilton, and Emma Lady Hamilton.

To show his gratitude, King Ferdinand made Nelson a Sicilian duke, with the title of Duke of Bronte, and gave him a large estate with pistachio orchards. The estate was then called named Maniace, after the Byzantine general George Maniakes, but it was promptly renamed Castello Nelson.

Castello Nelson looks like an English country house with an English country garden, rather than an Italian palazzo. Nelson never visited the place, but his ducal title and estate passed to hiss elder brother, the Revd William Nelson. The Nelson family continued to own the Bronte estate until 1978, and the family still owns the nearby English cemetery.

Irish literary connections

A Greek mask in the museum in Naxos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Prunty (1777-1861), who was born in Rathfriland, Co Down, on Saint Patrick’s Day, was the son of a farm labourer. He started off life as an apprentice blacksmith and then became an apprentice linen drape. But eventually became a teacher and managed to fund his way through a theological education at Saint John’s College, Cambridge.

Either because he was so in awe of Nelson, or so keen to mask his Irish identity, he changed his family name while he was at Cambridge to Brontë, adding umlaut to the final E in a dashing affectation. And so the novelist sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë came to be named after Nelson’s estate in Sicily, without a hint of their Irish origins.

Later English-speaking visitors to Taormina included Edward Lear, who came to paint in 1843, the poet Edmund John, who died of an overdose in the Hotel Timeo in 1917, DH Lawrence, who rented the Villa Fontana Vecchia, Bertrand Russell who stayed with the writer Daphne Phelps in her Casa Cuseni, Ernest Hemmingway, Roald Dahl, Tennessee Williams, and Dylan Thomas’s widow, Caitlin Thomas, who also stayed with Daphne Phelps.

Irish writers who visited Sicily included Oscar Wilde in 1897. George Bernard Shaw praised Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author as “the theatrical masterpiece of the [20th] century.” More recently, the Greek mythology of Sicily is reflected the poem ‘Sicily’ by Desmond Egan.

Greek coins from Sicily inspired WB Yeats in his design of the first Irish coins (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

It is not surprising then that the Irish Nobel poet William Butler Yeats was inspired by a visit to Sicily almost a century ago. While most of the celebrations this year of the 150th anniversary of his birth have focused on his poetry, it seems to be largely forgotten that he was also responsible for designing the first coins of the Irish Free State. The inspiration for those designs came during a visit to Sicily in the mid-1920s with the poet Ezra Pound.

Building a church

The cathedral in Syracuse stands on the site of a classical Greek temple (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Taormina first became a popular tourist resort in the 19th century. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was one the first celebrated tourists and he dedicated parts of his book Italian Journey to Taormina. Other early ‘celebrity’ visitors included Czar Nicholas I, Richard Wagner, and Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra while he was there.

For much of the 19th century, church services for the English-speaking community were held in the private homes of wealthy families or in the residence of the British Consul in Messina.

The baroque cathedral in Noto (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

At the end of the 19th century, Sir Edward Stock Hill (1824-1922) and Lady Hill bought a villa in Taormina known as Santa Catarina. It is now an hotel, but had once been a Franciscan convent and included a small private chapel, which Sir Edward offered for services. When the Hill family chapel became too small, Mrs Dashwood, the owner of the Villa San Pancrazio, offered the use of her large drawing room for Sunday services.

Sir Edward then decided to buy a site for a proper church. The architect was his son-in-law, Sir Harry Triggs (1876-1923), and Saint George’s Church was completed in Spring 1922 at a cost of £25,000. The writer DH Lawrence, who was then living in Taormina, refused to come to any of the meetings organised by the English-speaking community to organise the building programme, for fear he would be asked to pay for the whole project.

Antique shops in Taormina … the town has attracted tourists since the 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The first service in the new church was held on 17 December 1922, and the first churchwardens were the then Duke of Bronte, from Nelson’s family, and Sir Edward’s daughter, Mabel Hill.

Mabel Hill set up a school of embroidery to help women in Taormina to earn a small living. She invited the Salesian priests to set up a centre in Taormina in 1911, and their building in the town centre was named San Giorgio in her honour.

The public gardens were donated to Taormina by Florence Trevelyan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015; click on image to enlarge)

Inside, the church has two aisles, divided by three round arches in Syracuse stone with two central columns as their base. The most beautiful part of the church is its large polychrome window behind the high altar depicting Christ on the cross with Saint Catherine on the left and Saint George in mediaeval armour on the right.

Inspiration for Newman

A view from inside Saint George’s to the Sicilian coast and the Ionian Sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

John Henry Newman was an early English visitor to Taormina. When he arrived in 1833, he was a young Anglican priest, recovering from a fever that almost caused his death. He made a full recovery thanks to the kindness of strangers, and also visited Catania and Syracuse.

Newman described the Greek theatre in Taormina as “the nearest approach to seeing Eden” and said: “I felt that for the first time in my life I should be a better and more religious man if I lived here.”

After he recovered from his fever in Sicily and had visited Taormina, Newman left Palermo for Marseille in June 1833, on the first stage of his journey back to England. He was convinced that God still had work for him in England, and on the journey home from Sicily he wrote his hymn ‘Lead, kindly light.’

He arrived back in Oxford on 9 July, and five days later, on 14 July 1833, John Keble preached his Assize Sermon, marking the beginning of the Oxford Movement.

Inside Saint George’s Church in Taormina (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Of course, Newman’s words, inspired by his experiences in Sicily, came to mind as I was leaving Sicily for Dublin at the end of this holiday:

Lead, kindly light, amidst the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

‘And with the morn those angel faces smile’ … welcome to Saint George’s Anglican Church in Taormina (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Canon Patrick Comerford lectures in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This feature was first published in the November 2015 editions of the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough) and the ‘Diocesan Magazine’ (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory).

A change of boarding passes but no chance to question an odd practice

Why should I show my boarding pass at WH Smith’s in Heathrow? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

After a long working day in London yesterday [24 August 2015] I wanted to test the opportunity of refusing to show my boarding pass while buying newspapers at WH Smiths in Terminal 2 in Heathrow.

For the past few weeks, British newspapers have been reporting how air travellers are refusing to show their boarding passes at airport shops after revelations that the information is used by stores to avoid paying VAT, without passing on the discount to customers.

Like all frequent travellers, I find it tiring to be asked for my boarding pass when all I want to buy is the Guardian or the Economist.

I am constantly told, often through clenched teeth, that this is for security reasons. What security reasons? I have already been through all the security controls, checks and barriers, and have been photographed countless times.

I am never asked for my boarding pass when I’m buying a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. So why is the Guardian or the Economist a security threat, when a doubles espresso or a glass of Pinot Grigio is not?

I have always suspected that the reason my boarding pass is demanded is because retailers like WH Smith and Boots are scanning them for marketing reasons and phishing for details of customer habits. Yet every time they demand my boarding pass they do not offer an outline of their data control policies.

I sometimes wondered about the response if I refused to show my boarding pass until they gave me data control assurances, promising I would not receive unsolicited mailings or hand on my details to cold callers.

In the past, I have left my boarding pass with someone else while I went shopping in airports in Greece, and yet have been served with courtesy and understanding. Why does this not happen in airports in Britain?

Why can I buy a newspaper by putting money in an honesty box in Dublin Airport, but have to go through this rigmarole of fumbling for my boarding pass at Heathrow, Stansted and Birmingham.

But it turns out that the demand for boarding passes is not a marketing scam or phishing ruse, but part of a VAT rip-off.

Readers have been inundating English newspapers with threats to refuse to show their boarding cards in future, and there have been reports of protests at airport branches of WH Smith and Boots.

Airport retailers demand boarding cards from customers to avoid paying 20 per cent VAT on everything they sell to passengers who are travelling outside the EU, as there is no purchase tax due on such goods. Most of these outlets do not pass on the millions in savings to customers.

Shop staff regularly tell customers that we cannot buy something showing our boarding cards. The retailers claim a dual pricing system would be a practical impossibility and deny any suggestions that any chains are breaking the law. But telling the customers that the demand for boarding passes is for security reasons is bare-faced lying.

WH Smith, which operates several concessions in Dublin Airport, recently told The Irish Times that boarding passes are “requested from customers and not demanded” and there is no obligation on the part of consumers to comply with the request.

But in my experience at Heathrow, Stansted and Birmingham, it is always a demand.

In fact, boarding passes can only be insisted on when a customer is trying to buy duty-free products such as tobacco and alcohol. Newspapers, magazines and books do not attract VAT ratings.

Retailers in British airports are maximising their profits by scanning boarding passes and using the information to claim VAT back from passengers who travel outside the EU while refusing to pass the rebates back to customers. Under EU law, retailers can claim back VAT on sales to those leaving the EU but they have to process boarding cards in order to claim it.

But VAT is collected on behalf of the State and is not part of a retailer’s proper profit margin. VAT relief at airports is intended to reduce prices for travellers not as a windfall gain for shops. If a large number of VAT rebates cannot be processed because travellers like you and me refuse to show our boarding cards, then this is going to hit the retailers’ profits.

This was my sixth return flight between Dublin and English airports this year, and I have another later this week. I feel I have provided too much information for no reason whatsoever each time as I have queued with bags and newspapers and books for 10 minutes and then forced on demand to fumble for my boarding pass on the pretence that this is the law and this is for security reasons.

I have been tempted to move from paper boarding passes to mobile boarding passes, but have been hesitant because of high roaming charges on my phone. I would certainly not want to hand over my phone to WH Smith, not knowing what guarantees are in place for protecting any date they then have access to.

My meetings in London yesterday finished earlier than I had expected, and I had booked the last flight back to Dublin from Heathrow, Flight EI 183 at 21:19, due into Dublin at 22:40.

I was too late to catch the tube from Southwark to Westminster Abbey for Evensong at 5 p.m. I could have stayed in central London, and had an early dinner there. Instead, I decided to stay on the Jubilee Line to Green Park, and change to the Piccadilly Line and continue on to Heathrow.

I would be three hours early, but I could eat in comfort and without haste, do some work on my laptop … and I could see whether it was now possible, after all that media coverage and those protests to buy a newspaper at WH Smith while refusing to produce my boarding pass.

I had already printed out my boarding pass, Terminal 2 was reasonable quiet, and there were no queues at the Aer Lingus checkout desks. And then I wondered, just wondered. There were two earlier flights to Dublin: EI 177 at 19:10 and EI 179 at 20:10. There was less than an hour to go for the first of these flights, but the second one held the promise of being home an hour earlier.

The Are Lingus check-in-staff in Zone C could not have been more helpful or friendlier. Yes, they could change my booking, even though I had checked in online and printed out my boarding pass. No, there would be no charge. And yes, they could me on the earliest of those flights, they could see there were small queues at security and there were no problems ahead.

The experience at check-in in Heathrow last night was markedly different from that in Catania three weeks earlier (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

What a difference to my experience of trying to check-in with Aer Lingus at Catania in Sicily earlier this month [2 August] on Flight EI 463, when the queue stretch for over an hour, out of the airport, and when we were left standing, waiting for almost 45 minutes, without explanation or polite words when boarding was delayed!

I was through security last night in no time. In normal circumstances, had I arrived at an airport less than 50 minutes before departure, I would have been panicking. I was certainly glad that Aer Lingus had moved to Terminal 2, and the long, dreary, wearying trek at Terminal 1, ending at poor and ramped facilities at the departure gates, has been a thing of the past since July last year.

But there was no time for even a double espresso or glass of Pinot Grigio, and certainly no time for a meal. My flight was boarding, and I was going to be home two hours earlier than planned, thanks to the staff of Aer Lingus at Heathrow.

I had to wait until I arrived in Dublin to buy my newspapers last night. I was home two hours earlier than expected, and I never got the opportunity to refuse to show my boarding pass trying to buy my newspapers at Heathrow. I shall have to wait until I’m passing through Stansted over the next week or two to try this interesting experiment.

A taste of Sicily in Bray in the new Gatta Nera café

A taste of Italy in Caffé Letterario Gatta Nera in Bray, Co Wicklow, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

At times, Bray in Co Wicklow can take you back to Italy. There are buses to Palermo, street names like Florence, and wonderful Italian cafés, wine bars, pizzeria, gelatarias or ice cream parlours and restaurants.

My favourites include Carpe Diem, but I notice too that Pizzas ’n’ Cream on Albert Walk claims to be “the oldest pizzeria in Ireland” – it was established in 1986.

I was passing by Pizzas ’n’ Cream on Albert Walk, when I noticed for the first time the neighbouring Caffé Letterario Gatta Nera – the Black Cat Literary Café.

And in the hour that followed, I was taken back to last week’s pleasures in Sicily, less than 24 hours after leaving Catania and a week’s holidat in Guiardini Naxos and Taormina.

Here again I found a Sicilian Grillo, produced by co-operatives in Sicily set up on vineyards confiscated from the Mafia.

It is only a day since I was writing about the Libera Terra programme, usually producing vino biologico or organic wine, made from grapes cultivated on land confiscated from the Mafia.

Many vineyards in Sicily were left untended and uncultivated when Mafia owners were jailed, and many of the vines died from neglect and needed replanting. When the projects began, there were inevitable acts of intimidation, including arson fires. The co-operatives were not discouraged and did not lose hope.

The Libera Terra labels now include organic wines, pastas, legumes, olive oil, honey jams and limoncello – with a variety on sale this afternoon in this delightful new literary café in Bray.

Caffé Letterario Gatta Nera opened in Bray about five or six weeks ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The place only opened a few weeks ago [26 June 2015], but already there is mature confidence about the place, and a feeling that it already has its own regular customers.

There is a wall lined with books, not for decoration but reading, another lined with old Italian opera LP covers, and the shelves are lined with authentic Italian wines and foods, most seemingly from small-scale producers and co-operatives. We heard of live music evenings, home-made organic Sicilian lemon marmalade tart, and ideas for art and entertainment.

We had two large sandwiches, two double espressos, and I also had that glass of Grillo from Sicily.

Tastes of Italy on the shelves of Caffé Letterario Gatta Nera (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Later, we went for a walk along the north end of the promenade, around the harbour, where the tide was out and the water was sparkling in the evening lights, by the sailing club, and down onto the small beach where the River Dargle flows into the harbour and where the friendly swans were expecting to be fed.

Evening lights in Bray Harbour, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Singing with Newman on the journey home after visiting the Anglican church in Taormina

‘Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see / The distant scene; one step enough for me’ … the view from the terrace in the garden behind Saint George’s Anglican Church, Taormina (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

This one-week visit to Sicily comes to end this evening when I catch a late-night flight from Catania, arriving back in Dublin early on Monday morning.

It seemed such an appropriate way to wrap up the holiday this morning [2 August 2015] by taking the local bus back up the hill to Taormina, high above Giardini Naxos, to be present for the celebration of the Sung Sunday Eucharist in Saint George’s Anglican Church.

Saint George’s is in the centre of Taormina is on Via Luigi Pirandello, next door to the Pensione Svizzera, and close to the bus station, the cable car and all the main attractions. There is a celebration of the Eucharist in English here at 11 a.m. every Sunday.

A view from a window in Saint George’s to the Sicilian coast and the Ionian Sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Saint George’s is a stone church with spectacular panoramic views from its windows and from the terrace in the green garden behind the church that looks out across the Ionian Sea. The church is below street level but a banner on the wall and the attractive stone arch makes it easy to find the way in.

Although Saint George’s Church does not have a permanent chaplain, the church is served on a voluntary basis by locum priests who stay for one to three months each time. In August, Saint George’s is being looked after by the Revd Canon Dr Lawson Nagel, of Saint Richard’s Church, Aldwick, two miles from Bognor Regis (Diocese of Chichester).

When we arrived this morning we were warmly welcomed by the verger, Salvatore Galeano, who took over from his father in 2000. This is a family tradition, and before Salvatore, both his mother and his grandfather had been vergers.

English-speaking people were among the first foreigners who came to stay in Sicily from the 17th century on as Europeans developed a renewed interest in the art and history of the Greek and Roman world.

Some of these English-speaking families settled in Sicily, mainly in Palermo and Taormina. The families who made Sicily their island home were engaged in a wide range of fields, from the wine trade and agricultural produce to archaeological research.

The British presence in Sicily grew in 1799 when King Ferdinand IV donated the Castle of Maniace to Admiral Nelson, along with the title Duke of Bronte, after he fled from Naples to Palermo on Nelson’s ship. The large estate granted to Nelson as Duke of Bronte included the Villa Falconara in Taormina. The villa remained a home to Nelson’s heirs until the mid-1950s, and the family played a key role in founding Saint George’s.

The Dublin-born singer, composer and theatre manager, Michael Kelly (1762-1826) was an early Irish visitor to Taormina. He was a friend of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and of Mozart, and he first visited Sicily in 1780, and became one of the first singers of his time from either Britain or Ireland to make a front-rank reputation in Italy.

An early English visitor to Taormina was John Henry Newman, who came in 1833. He was then a young Anglican priest, recovering from a fever that almost caused his death. He made a full recovery thanks to the kindness of strangers, and also visited Catania and Syracuse. He described the Greek theatre in Taormina as “the nearest approach to seeing Eden” and said: “I felt that for the first time in my life I should be a better and more religious man if I lived here.”

English-speaking visitors to Taormina who followed included Edward Lear, who came to paint in 1843 and Oscar Wilde in 1897. They were followed by the poet Edmund John, who died of an overdose in the Hotel Timeo in 1917, DH Lawrence, who rented the Villa Fontana Vecchia, WB Yeats, Ezra Pound, Bertrand Russell who stayed with the writer Daphne Phelps, Ernest Hemmingway, Roald Dahl, Tennessee Williams, and Dylan Thomas’s widow, Caitlin Thomas, who also stayed with Daphne Phelps in the Casa Cuseni.

For much of the 19th century, church services for the English-speaking community were held in the private homes of wealthy families or in the residence of the British Consul in Messina.

At the end of the 19th century, Sir Edward Stock Hill (1824-1922) and Lady Hill bought a villa in Taormina known as Santa Catarina. It is now an hotel, but had once been a Franciscan convent and included a small private chapel, which Sir Edward offered for services. When the Hill family’s chapel became too small, Mrs Dashwood, owner of the Villa San Pancrazio, offered the use of her large drawing room for the Sunday services.

Sir Edward then decided to buy a site for a proper church. The architect was his son-in-law, Sir Harry Triggs (1876-1923), and Saint George’s Church was completed in the Spring of 1922. The building cost £25,000 to build, and the writer DH Lawrence, who was then living in Taormina, refused to come to any of the meetings organised by the English-speaking community to organise the building programme, for fear he would be asked to pay for the whole project.

The first service in the new church was held on 17 December 1922, and the first churchwardens were the then Duke of Bronte, from Nelson’s family, and Sir Edward’s daughter, Mabel Hill.

Mabel Hill set up a school of embroidery to help women in Taormina to earn a small living. She invited the Salesian priests to set up a centre in Taormina in 1911, and their building in the town centre was named San Giorgio in her honour.

Inside Saint George’s Anglican Church in Taormina (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Inside, the church has two aisles, divided by three round arches in Syracuse stone with two central columns as their base. The most beautiful part of the church is its large polychrome window behind the high altar depicting Christ on the cross with Saint Catherine on the left and Saint George in mediaeval armour on the right.

Of course, Newman’s words, inspired by his experiences in Sicily, came to mind when visiting Saint George’s Church this morning.

After he recovered from his fever in Sicily and had visited Taormina, Newman left Palermo for Marseille in June 1833, on the first stage of his journey back to England. He was convinced that God still had work for him in England, and on the journey home from Sicily he wrote his hymn ‘Lead, kindly light.’

He arrived back in Oxford on 9 July, and five days later, on 14 July 1833, John Keble preached his Assize Sermon in Saint Mary’s Church, marking the beginning of the Oxford Movement.

Newman never returned to Taormina. Would he have been a better and more religious man if he returned to live in Taormina? I leave that to your imagination. But that hymn he wrote recounting his experiences on the fraught journey back from Taormina to Oxford, is on my mind as I return from Sicily to Dublin:

Lead, kindly light, amidst the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!

So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!

Meantime, along the narrow rugged path,
Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Saviour, lead me home in childlike faith,
Home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life.

‘And with the morn those angel faces smile’ … welcome to Saint George’s Anglican Church in Taormina (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

When buying the bottle of wine is better than buying the T-shirt

A bottle of Grillo, from a vineyard confiscated from the Mafia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

My week in Sicily is coming to an end. It has been a full week, swimming in the blue waters of the Ionian Sea, visiting the classical Greek theatres in Taormina and Syracuse, visiting the architecturally rich towns of Noto and Taormina, finding my way through the archaeological remains of Naxos, reaching the castellated peak of Castelmola, and getting two-thirds of the way up Mount Etna.

There have been cathedrals, churches and chapels to visit, the occasional castle and palazzo, mountains to climb, volcanic rocks to stumble across, white beaches and blue rivers to stroll along, cable cars to rise and descend in, and a blue moon to savour as it scattered golden rays on the waters of the Ionian Sea.

In the Grotta Azzura or Blue Cave, below Taormino, in the Nay of Naxos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Much of yesterday was spent by the beach in Recanati, outside Giardini Naxos, and in the afternoon two of us were taken by boat along the long the stretch of coast from Recanati, passing around the Cape of Schiso to the shores of Giardini Naxos and the Bay of Naxos, around Capo Taormina below Taormina on the hill above, stopping briefly to wonder at tiny and conserved Isola Bella, entering the Grotta Azzura (Blue Cave) – less crowded and more relaxing than its counterpart on Capri – and on to the Baia di Mazzaro and the Baia di Mazzeo.

One of the joys of a new holiday destination is noticing the changes in trees and flowers, in fruits and birdsongs, in the sounds of music and buskers, in traditions about eating out, daily coffee and the evening promenade, and getting to know the local wines.

One of the joys of a new holiday destination is exploring the local wines and coffees (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

I expected to hear a little more about the Mafia, as any visitor to Sicily must do, but perhaps ought to have been surprised that the only visible presence is in either a popular T-shirt slogan proclaiming “I am the godfather,” or the half-day “Godfather Tour” offered by all the local travel agents.

Inevitably, the tour brings visitors through the streets and churches of Savoca and the catacombs of the Cappucini Convent.

But looking for a bottle of wine to sip on the balcony of my room in the Hotel Villa Linda last night, I was delighted with a bottle of Grillo from Centopassi collection of Libera Terra labelled Rocce di Petra Longa.

Grillo is a Sicilian white grape variety once associated primarily with Sicily’s fortified Marsala wines, which have long fallen from fashion.

Grill is still widely planted on Sicily, but is now used mainly in a variety of still white wines. At a high standard, it makes a fresh, light white wine with nutty, fruit-driven flavours that include lemon and apple.

There is some debate about the origins of Grillo. Some say it is native to Sicily, derived from Catarratto and Muscat of Alexandria. Others say it was brought here from Puglia in southern Italy. Another story says it is the same wine as Mamertino, a favourite of Julius Caesar.

Grillo is well suited to the hot, dry Sicilian climate. Although Catarratto has higher yields, Sicilian producers are replanting Grillo, making Grillo wines with more pleasant, fruit-driven aromas. Grillo today is light, easy-drinking and often associated with very good value, and so competes well with Soave, Gavi and Pinot Grigio.

Last night’s bottle, bought in a small local supermarket, was vino biologico or an organic wine, made from grapes cultivated on land confiscated from the Mafia.

Unicredit bank helped fund planting new vineyards on 150 ha near Palermo that had been confiscated from a former Mafia boss, Michele Greco, who died in prison in 2008. It was all part of a €1.2 billion EU project to recover ex-Mafia land, including vineyards in Sicily, Calabria, Puglia and Campania, and integrate them back into the legal economy.

Greco, who was known as “The Pope,” had been a leading figure in the Cosa Nostra, and was jailed for life for a number of murders, including the 1982 assassination of Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, and his wife.

The project includes 125 hectares of vineyards near Palermo and 800 hectares of olive and citrus trees. Most of the land had gone untended and uncultivated when Mafia owners were jailed. Many of the vines had died from neglect and needed replanting.

When the projects began, there were inevitable acts of intimidation, including arson fires. The co-operatives were not discouraged and did not lose hope.

Libera Terra’s wine business, including Centopassi, was soon producing half a million bottles a year. Each of the Centopassi wines is dedicated to someone assassinated by the Mafia. The white wine I enjoyed last night – Grillo – was dedicated in honour of Nicolo Azoti, a trade union leader murdered in 1946.

And enjoying that on my balcony last night was a better tribute than going on the the tour or buying the T-shirt.

A final boat trip along the coast of Naxos and Taormino (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Pistachios everywhere, but no sign of Nelson anywhere

Almost all the pistachios in Italy are grown on the slopes of Mount Etna, near the Nelson estate at Bronte (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

Sicily and Sardinia are the only parts of Italy that Napoleon never conquered, and Sicily is the only part of Italy where pistachio trees are grown.

Indeed, more than 85% of Sicily’s pistachio trees grow on the slopes of Mount Etna, because of its mineral-rich volcanic soil, and most of those trees grow in orchards around the town of Bronte, on the north-western slopes of the volcano.

In all the shops, cafés and souvenir stalls around Rifugio Sapienza, they sell every imaginable pistachio product: pistachio pesto, pistachio biscuits, pistachio jam, pistachio pasta sauce, pistachio liqueurs, pistachio-carved wooden kitchen utensils … as well as pistachios in packages and loose pistachios.

You simply cannot get enough pistachios from Bronte anywhere near Mount Etna.

As Napoleon advanced though Italy, King Ferdinand IV and the Bourbon court fled revolutionary Naples in 1799. They were brought to safety in Sicily by Admiral Horatio Nelson on his ship. Also on board were Sir William Hamilton, and Emma Lady Hamilton.

To show his gratitude, King Ferdinand made Nelson a Sicilian duke, with the title of Duke of Bronte, and gave him a large estate – with pistachio orchards, needless to say. The estate was then called named Maniace, after the Byzantine general George Maniakes, but it was promptly renamed Castello Nelson.

Castello Nelson looks like an English country house with an English country garden, rather than an Italian palazzo. Nelson never visited the place.

The grant of Bronte, allowed Nelson to name any members of his family as his heir, but his will never named Orazia, the daughter he had with Emma Hamilton. Instead, Bronte and the ducal title passed to Nelson’s elder brother, the Revd William Nelson.

Nelson’s family still owned the Bronte estate until 1978, and the family still actually own the nearby English cemetery.

Patrick Prunty, who was born in Rathfriland, Co Down, on Saint Patrick’s Day 1777, the son of a farm labourer. He started off life as an apprentice blacksmith and then an apprentice linen draper, but eventually became a teacher and then managed to fund his way through a theological education at Saint John’s College, Cambridge.

Either because he was so in awe of Nelson, or so keen to mask his Irish identity, he changed his family name while he was at Cambridge to Brontë, adding an affectatious umlaut to the final E.

He hardly changed his name in honour of the cyclops Brontes, buried beneath Mount Etna after being slain by Apollo.

Can you imagine reading the novels of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Prunty?

Pistachios!

Pistachio pesto on sale on the slopes of Mount Etna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Climbing Mount Etna … or at least two-thirds of the way up

Two-thirds of the way up the slopes Mount Etna ... there was still more to go (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

Who could visit Sicily without wanting to go up Mount Etna? It is one of Sicily’s main tourist attractions, with thousands of visitors every year.

I am staying all this week in Recanati, near Giardini Naxos, on the east coast of Sicily, and it seems that everywhere I go the scenery is dominated by two mountain tops: Monetauro, topped by the town of Taurmino, and Mount Etna, covered with barest of clouds at any time but never showing any billows of smoke, although it is still classified as an active volcano, and the last eruption was on 27 January 2014.

Mount Etna is the tallest active volcano on the European continent, and its height is put at 3,350 metres (10,990 feet) high, making it 2.5 times the height of Mount Vesuvius, although the calculated height of Mount Etna can vary from time to time with eruptions at the summit.

Greek mythology says the deadly monster Typhon was trapped under Mount Etna by Zeus, and the forges of Hephaestus were located beneath its slopes.

The summit of Mount Etna has at least five distinct craters and the flanks have more than 300 vents, from small holes to large craters (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Although the summit has at least five distinct craters, the flanks have more than 300 vents ranging in size from small holes in the ground to large craters that are hundreds of metres wide.

The fertile volcanic soil explains why the lower slopes of the volcano are covered with vineyards and orchards. We left Recanati early in the morning by bus and drove up through the pretty, 18th century small town of Zafferana Etnea on the south-east side of Etna, and on through flowering citrus groves, vineyards, orchards and woods rich with chestnut trees, beech and pine.

The rich summer growth soon gave way to the black-and-grey volcanic landscape, where some hard plants continued to push through the surface.

The Funivia dell’Etna cable car travels between Rifugio Sapienza and Monte Montagnola (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The winding road brought us to Rifugio Sapienza, a ski area on the south slopes of the crater at a height of about 1,910 metres. From there we took the Funivia dell’Etna cable car to Monte Montagnola at 2,500 metres.

We had made it up more than two-thirds of the way.

Minibuses work in relays to bring people further up the slopes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

From there, minibuses were working in relays to bring people a little further up – not quite to the top, but to a crater area at 2,920 metres. Instead, we lingered a while as watched the climbers trekking up the slopes, sipped our coffees and bought some locally made honey and pistachio products before returning in a cable car to Rifugio Sapienza.

It was time for more coffee at Esagonal, at the Piazzale Funivia, before returning through the groves and vineyards around Zafferana Etnea.

We were back in Recanatia in the early afternoon. If trapped Typhon was angry, then there was short thunderstorm while we went for a walk on the beach and a short swim.

Time to stop and think on the south slopes of Mount Etna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Just once, in a very blue moon … on the east coast of Sicily

The full moon rising this evening at the beach in Recanati in Sicily (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

It is just “once in a Blue Moon.”

I can see the Blue Moon from my balcony in the Villa Linda in Giardini Naxos tonight. Earlier in the evening, after sunset, I strolled along the beach in Recanati, to see the moon rise slowly above the horizon and scatter its sparkling reflections across the waters of the Ionian Sea.

Earlier in the afternoon, after coming down Mount Etna, there were patches of dark clouds across parts of the east coast of Sicily and the thunderstorm lasted for about half an hour, with flashes of lighting across the water.

None of this deterred nor disturbed swimmers or paragliders, and life at the beach went on as normal. Italian weekenders have arrived here in large numbers, and families were still on the beach, enjoying the late July heat, after sunet.

But as I watched, I wondered how many people realised that the rising moon tonight is a blue moon.

This blue moon is the second full moon this month and the first Blue Moon since August 2012. Every month has a full moon – apart from a very exceptional February – and the word month itself is derived from the word moon. But a Blue Moon happens only once every three years or so because the lunar calendar and the solar calendar are never the same.

Of course, the moon tonight does not look blue at all … the phrase has nothing to do with the actual colour of the moon.

When the moon has a bluish hue, it is because of smoke or dust particles in the atmosphere. But Mount Etna, which I climbed earlier today, has not erupted this evening.

When the phrase “once in a blue moon” was first used, it meant something so rare you or I would be lucky – or unlucky – to have seen it in our own lifetime.

So, where does the term comes from?

In calculating the dates of Lent and Easter, the early Church identified a Lenten moon. Sometimes, February, with only 28 or 29 days, has no full moon. So, when the full moon arrived too early, the early moon was called a betrayer or belewe moon.

The earliest recorded use of the term Blue Moon in English is found in a pamphlet attacking Rome and Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, written in 1528 by two Greenwich friars, William Roy and Jerome Barlow.

There is not going to be another Blue Moon again for another few years. Where shall I be then?

The blue moon seen tonight in Sicily from the Hotel Villa Linda in Recanati (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Reading ‘The Sicilian Vespers’ once again … in Sicily

The Palazzo Corvajo in Taormina … the Sicilian Parliament met here in 1410, ending the War of the Sicilian Verspers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

Listening to the bells of the cathedrals in Taormina, Suracuse or Noto during this week in Sicily, or visiting the Palazzo Corvajo in Taormina, I am reminded of the Sicilian Vespers (Vespri Siciliani) and the slaughter associated with it – a story I first read about in detail in the magisterial book of the same name by the late Steven Runciman (1903-2000), one of the greatest Byzantine scholars.

The Sicilian Vespers is the name given to a popular revolt that broke throughout Sicily in Easter 1282 against the rule of the French-born king, Charles of Anjou, who had ruled Sicily since 1266. Within six weeks, 3,000 French men and women and Charles I and his Angevin government lost control. It was the beginning of the War of the Sicilian Vespers.

The rising had its origin in the struggle over the control of Sicily between the House of Hohenstaufen, which then ruled Germany, and the Papacy and the Papal States. In 1245, Pope Innocent IV tried to depose the Emperor Frederick II. In 1255, Sicily was seized by Frederick’s illegitimate son, Manfred, who ruled from 1258 to 1266.

Both Pope Urban IV and Pope Clement IV excommunicated Manfred and then tried to depose him. At first the crown of Sicily was sold by the Pope to Henry III of England, who accepted it on behalf of his eight-year-old son, Edmund ‘Crouchback’ or Edmund of Lancaster (1245-1296), who was styled “King of Sicily” for ten years.

But in those ten years, England never paid any rent to the Pope, and “King Edmund” never set foot on Sicily. Urban IV then deposed Edmund, and made Charles of Anjou (1227-1285) the King of Sicily, on condition that he paid the accumulated English debts to the Pope.

Charles, who was the younger brother of King Louis IX of France, imposed heavy, punitive taxes on the people of Sicily to pay the debt he had acquired. But he was even more ambitious than many realised, and had plans to capture Constantinople and to overthrow of the Emperor of Byzantium, Michael VIII Palaeologus.

But Sicily was never a happy part of the Angevin empire, the resident nobility had no voice in government and heavy taxes were imposed on the island to pay for Charles’s wars outside Sicily.

Byzantine agents in Sicily worked to undermine Charles’s plans and projects, and found a voice in Manfred’s son-in-law, King Peter III of Aragon, who regarded his wife Constance as the rightful heir to the throne of Sicilian throne.

The revolt known as the Sicilian Vespers began when the bells rang out in the Church of the Holy Spirit, Palermo, at the start of Vespers, the sunset prayers on Easter Monday, 30 March 1282.

According to Runciman, the Sicilians at church that evening were taking part in the holiday festivities when a group of French officials came in and began to drink. A sergeant named Drouet dragged a young married woman from the crowd, pestering her with his advances. Her husband attacked Drouet with a knife and killed him. When the other Frenchmen tried to avenge their comrade, the Sicilian crowd fell upon them, killing them all. At that moment all the church bells in Palermo began to ring for Vespers.

The Cathedral or Duomo in the centre of Taormina (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Runciman describes the mood of the night:

To the sound of the bells, messengers ran through the city calling on the men of Palermo to rise against the oppressor. At once the streets were filled with angry armed men, crying “Death to the French” (“moranu li Franchiski” in their Sicilian dialect). Every Frenchman they met was struck down. They poured into the inns frequented by the French and the houses where they dwelt, sparing neither man, woman nor child. Sicilian girls who had married Frenchmen perished with their husbands. The rioters broke into the Dominican and Franciscan convents; and all the foreign friars were dragged out and told to pronounce the word “ciciri,” whose sound the French tongue could never accurately reproduce. Anyone who failed the test was slain … By the next morning some two thousand French men and women lay dead; and the rebels were in complete control of the city.

In a different account of events, written in 1416, Leonardo Bruni says the people of Palermo were holding a festival outside the city when the French came to check for weapons, and on that pretext began to fondle the breasts of their women. This then began a riot. The French were attacked first with rocks, then weapons, killing them all. The news spread to other cities leading to revolt throughout Sicily.

Messina was well fortified, and there the leading family, the Riso, remained loyal to Charles. But on 28 April it too broke into open revolt and in the harbour the people set fire to the Angevin fleet in the harbour.

Charles had ruled as king from Naples rather than Palermo. When he heard of the destruction of his fleet, he exclaimed: “Lord God, since it has pleased you to ruin my fortune, let me only go down in small steps.”

Within six weeks, thousands of French people had been massacred in Sicily. The only place in Sicily not to join the uprising was the small village of Sperlinga, which protected French soldiers in the castle.

After order was restored in Palermo, the citizens proclaimed a free commune answerable only to the pope. They elected leaders, including Bartholomaeus of Neocastro who gave his own account of the revolt in his Historia Sicula.

A Genoese merchant, Alafranco Cassano, brought news to the Emperor Michael that Charles had been defeated. Ambassadors were sent to Pope Martin IV with a petition for each city in Sicily to become a free commune under the sole suzerainty of the Church. Perhaps each city was hoping for a status similar to that of Venice, Genoa, Pisa or other free cities throughout Italy.

However, the Pope was French and continued to support Charles as the rightful King of Sicily. But he underestimated how the Sicilians hated the French and especially Charles, and refused the islanders’ pleas.

The Sicilians then sent for King Peter III of Aragon, whose wife Constance was the sole surviving heir of Frederick II who was not in captivity and in a position to assert her rights. Through his wife’s position, Peter III now claimed the Kingdom of Sicily.

He had assembled a war fleet off the north coast of Africa in Tunis, 200 miles by sea from Sicily. Taking advantage of the revolt, his fleet sailed for Sicily, landed at Trapani on 30 August 1282, and he marched on Palermo, arriving on 2 September.

Pope Martin ordered the people to accept Charles as their king, but Peter countered with a promise to guarantee their ancient privileges. Peter was crowned King of Sicily by acclamation in the cathedral in Palermo on 4 September, becoming King Peter I of Sicily.

Charles counter-attacked with his fleet based in Naples. He blockaded the port of Messina, but failed in his several attempts to land troops on the island.

Years later, Michael VIII wrote: “Should I dare to claim that I was God’s instrument to bring freedom to the Sicilians, then I should only be stating the truth.”

As for Edmund Crouchback, the English boy-king who never set foot on Sicily, he died at the Siege of Bayonne died on 5 June 1296; his body was brought back to England, where he was buried in Westminster Abbey. Eventually, the House of Lancaster claimed the throne of England in the War of the Roses, and he was the ancestor of Henry IV.

A statue of King Charles I at the Royal Palace, Naples

In the Divine Comedy, Dante sees Charles of Anjou outside the gates of Purgatory “singing in accord” with his former rival, Peter. After 1282, he is usually known as King of Naples. He proclaimed himself King of Albania in 1272 and by purchase he became King of Jerusalem in 1277. He died on 7 January 1285.

For centuries, the Beaumont family, who inherited Wednesbury Manor in Staffordshire and passed it though marriage to the Comberford family of Comberford and Tamworth, claimed they were descended from Louis, son of Charles of Anjou.

The claim was perpetuated in heraldic family trees that William Comberford used to decorate the ceiling of the Moat House in Tamworth in the early 17th century. However, it appears that the only Louis who was a son of Charles of Anjou died in infancy. (For more see here.)

The Beaumont coat-of-arms on the ceiling of the Long Gallery in the Moat House, Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The War of the Sicilian Vespers between Anjou and Aragon continued for decades, but was more often waged in Spain or on the sea than in Sicily.

The War of the Sicilian Vespers finally came to an end in 1410. After the death of Martin II, a group of Aragonese nobles gathered in the so-called Sicilian “parliament” in the Palazzo Corvaja in Taormina to choose the next King of Sicily.

Sicily was placed under direct Spanish rule, and remained a Spanish controlled island, apart from a brief period of Habsburg rule in the early 18th century, for 450 years until Italian unification in 1860.

Runciman notes that with or without Byzantine gold, it was the people of Sicily alone who fought against their armed oppressor. “However it may have been plotted and prepared, it was that one March evening of the Vespers at Palermo that brought down King Charles’ empire.”

Sources

Steven Runciman, The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).

A visit to the site of Naxos, first Greek colony in Sicily

The beach-front bars acknowledge the Greek origins of Naxos, the earliest Greek settlement in Sicily (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

I had promised myself that this week I would explore Giardini Naxos and the site of Naxos, the earliest Greek settlement in Sicily. But it became a busy week, with visits to lofty hill town of Taormina, which stands high above Giardini Naxos, and later in the week to the classical sites in Syracuse and Noto with its grand baroque architecture.

After two walks on the beach at Recanati yesterday [30 July 2015] and along the shoreline, I went in search of the classical city of Naxos, which is behind a railed site east of Recanati.

But it was a long walk around the site and through the resort of Giardini Naxos before I found the entrance to the archaeological site and museum beside La Sirena restaurant on the busy seafront, on the low, rocky headland now called Cape Schisò. It is hard to imagine with these few scanty remains that this was once an important centre of Greek civilisation and culture on the island of Sicily, and remained so until the Arab invasions of the Byzantine Empire.

The beach at Naxos, where the first Greek settlers arrived in Sicily in 735 BC (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Classical Naxos stood on Cape Schisò, formed by an ancient stream of lava, immediately to the north of the Alcantara, one of the great gorges in Sicily. A small bay to the north separates in from the foot of the hill-top town of Taormina.

Classical writers say Naxos was the most ancient Greek colony in Sicily. It was founded a year before Syracusae (Syracuse), or in 735 BC, by a group of colonists from Chalcis in Euboea and the island of Naxos in the Cyclades.

The leader of the colonists and the founder of the city was Theocles or Thucles, who was born in Athens. But the name of Naxos is derived from the presence among the original settlers of a group of colonists from Naxos.

The new colony must have been speedily joined by fresh settlers from Greece. Six years after it was established, the Chalcidians at Naxos were able to send out a fresh colony to set up the city of Leontini (Lentini) in 730 BC, followed soon by another colony at Catana.

Strabo also speaks of Zancle (modern Messina) as a colony from Naxos, although Thucydides does not mention this. Callipolis was another colony of Naxos, although the site is not known.

The lengthy remains of the former city walls of Naxos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Surprisingly, we know little about the early history of Naxos, and the first accounts are about disasters that hit the Greek city. Herodotus recounts that Naxos was besieged and captured by Hippocrates, the despot of Gela, ca 498-491 BC.

Soon after, Naxos was in the hands of Gelon of Syracuse and his brother Hieron by 476 BC. In a move to strengthen his own military power, Hieron moved the people of Naxos and Catana to Leontini, and brought in new Greek colonists to live in the cities he had emptied.

However, Naxos was restored to the original inhabitants in 461 BC, and the cities of Naxos, Leontini and Catana formed a close alliance against Syracuse and the other Doric cities in Sicily.

When Athens sent a force to Sicily under Laches and Charoeades, Naxos immediately came to its aid. In the war that followed, Naxos repulsed a sudden attack from Messina in 425 BC.

During a later expedition from Athens to Sicily, the Athenian fleet landed at Naxos in 415 BC, and Naxos once again fought on the same side as the Athenians. Thucydides recalls that Naxos and Catania were the only Greek cities in Sicily that sided with Athens.

A revenge attack on Naxos by Syracuse was called off in 409 BC because Carthage was posing a military threat to all the Greek cities in Sicily. But in 403 BC, Dionysius of Syracuse captured Naxos which was betrayed by the general Procles. Dionysius sold all the inhabitants of Naxos into slavery, razed the city walls and buildings, and handed over the defeated city’s territory to neighbouring Siculi.

Naxos never recovered from this blow, and it is difficult to trace what happened to the place in the immediate aftermath. But a new settlement was built on the hill called Mount Taurus, which rises immediately above the site of Naxos ca 396 BC, and this eventually became the town of Tauroménion (Ταυρομένιον), present-day Taormina.

In 358 BC, Andromachus, the father of the historian Timaeus, gathered together the descendants of the people of Naxos, by now exiles throughout the island, and brought them to live on the hill of Tauroménion, which became the successor of ancient Naxos.

Pliny the Elder is mistaken when he says Tauroménion was once called Naxos. The new city quickly prospered, and the site of Naxos was never fully resettled.

However, the altar and shrine of Apollo Archegetes continued to mark the spot where Naxos once stood, and it is mentioned in the war between Octavian and Sextus Pompey in Sicily in 36 BC. It remained a tradition for all envoys setting out on sacred missions to Greece, or returning to Sicily to stop at Naxos and offer a sacrifice on the altar.

The Byzantine site at Giardini Naxos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The site stretches over a large area of Cape Schisò, among olive and lemon groves. It is badly labelled, but it is possible to make the foundations of a once-large town laid out in grids and a long stretch of the city wall of Naxos, as well as rubble indicating the later presence of a Byzantine town on the site.

For centuries, the Schisò Castle belonged to the De Spuches family. It is still private property and is not open to visits or for archaeological research. It may date back to 1100. It has a square plant and four round towers and is surrounded by a large garden. The castle had an autonomous supply of water thanks to a well immediately outside.

Underground passages connected to the Vignazza Tower, an impressive defence garrison on the promontory of Naxos, and to another small fortress east of the castle. Inside the Schisò Castle is the small Church of Saint Pantaleo, a martyr who was a missionary in Roman Sicily (feast day 29 July).

During the Arab occupation of Sicily, Naxos was called al-Kusus. In the Norman period, Kusus became Kisoi and then Schisò. Since the area was widely cultivated with citrus orchards, it came to be known as Giardini and was part of the administrative area of Taormina.

In 1005, Queen Adelasia, the wide of Count Roger of Altavilla, gave the Church of Saint Pantaleo at Schisò to monks following the rule of Saint Basil, granting them the right of tax-free fishing in the sea off Naxos.

Schisò Castle may date back to 1100. For centuries, the castle belonged to the De Spuches family. It remains private property in the hands of the Palladino family and is not open to visits or for archaeological research. It has a square shape and four round towers and is surrounded by a large garden. The castle had an autonomous supply of water thanks to a well immediately outside.

The towers and castles on the cape helped to protect the Sicilian coastline along the Ionian Sea against corsairs and pirates from the north African coast, and the raids did not cease until France conquered Algiers in 1830.

In 1846, King Ferdinand II transformed Giardini into an independent commune. The economic development of Giardini Naxos started around 1870 after the Messina-Catania railway opened and changed the small maritime village into a popular tourist destination.

However, the site of Naxos has never been fully excavated by archaeologists, and some of the small number of pieces recovered are on display in the small two-room museum.

Exhibits in the Archaeological Museum at the site of Naxos (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2015)