Piazza Armerina to Enna (21/9)

Cactus are grown fro the fruit in the drier areas.

We said goodbye to our lovely hostess and headed along the coast towards Gela. We didn't stop along the way as nothing enticed us to. There were many abandoned, derelict buildings, and we suddenly realised that we were witnessing the aftermath of WWII. Reading the guide book made sense of this because the Allies landed here between Licata and Syracuse in the first stage of the fight to drive the Germans out of Italy. No wonder so many Sicilians emigrated to Australia and other countries after the war. As farmers, they probably had little left to call their own after firstly living with the German occupation, and then the Allies sweeping through, probably destroying anything that looked as if it might house German troops. You probably would walk away from the heartbreak of losing everything that had probably been in the family for generations.

These signs didn't match our experience!

We bypassed Gela (the guidebooks were not complimentary) and headed inland, and therefore climbed up, to for Piazza Armerina. The countryside really started to look more productive and prosperous. The snow signs along the road seemed incongruous as we sweltered in 32C heat and high humidity. As we moved inland, the haze increased. Farmers here have yet to revise their farming practice of burning off stubble. Fires are left to smoulder unattended, and as in some places, to spread into olive groves and vineyards. There would often be four or five plumes of smoke rising skywards at any one time. One thing the Sicilians have progressed with is solar and wind power. We have passed some huge arrays of solar panels, and there are wind farms everywhere. Sicily is very different to France in that there aren't small villages dotted about the countryside. Instead, there are individual farms within close proximity to each other, and then the larger towns. You rarely see a church outside of a large town, whereas in France every village had its church, and it's size was not dependent on the size of the village in which it stood. We have twice passed goat and sheep herders along the way. There are large areas with little fencing so it would make sense.

The hot room with the furnace behind

The Villa Romana del Casale at Piazza Armerina, is thought to have been built in the early 4^th century, is believed to have been damaged and and abandoned a century later when the Vandals dominated. What is known is that it was covered by a landslide or mudslide in the 12^th century AD, although some of the walls and columns remained above ground. It contains the richest, largest and most complex collection of Roman mosaics in the world and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. If you see photos of Roman mosaics, they are likely to have been taken at this site.
There is quite a lot of structure left in some areas as well as the floors, and most of it has now been covered by extensive roofing to protect it. We arrived at the site of the Villa about mid-morning and it was well over 30C, but at least we would be inside. Once again, there was no map available at the ticket office, so we decided to buy a guide book. The audio guide would have cost as much, and we would have come away with information overload and nothing to refer back to, so the book was the better option, and it proved to be worth it.
The villa is built on a sloping site and the areas of building increase in importance as you move up the slope. 

Some of the animal medallions
around the courtyard

The tour starts with the furnaces of the bath house, and you move past the communal latrines (yep, no hiding here!!!) and then through the entrance, which had three gates, into a semi-circular column-lined courtyard. All the walls were painted with frescoes so that the overall effect is to leave you in no doubt that here lived someone of importance. There is still some dispute as to whether the villa was built for a senator or an emperor. From this courtyard you enter the vestibule, where people met the Dominus (villa owner) each morning to ask favours, discuss grievances etc. At the end of business, each person received a gift from the Dominus. This was effectively buying the allegiance of that person. That's how it worked then, and it hasn't changed much since. 

Detail of an animal medallion

For the more privileged visitors, you progressed into the peristilium or the central courtyard. This was essentially the living room of the house. It provided fresh air and light to the thirteen rooms which bordered it, and the large fountain and gardens helped cool them. The floor of the walkway around this courtyard was covered with a mosaic composed of 160 medallions of animal heads framed with laurel wreaths, each approximately a metre wide and all very well done! Within the peristilium was a small votive temple where the people of the house worshiped their personal gods and ancestors. Off to one side was a small private loo – only four seats in this one. The rooms off the peristilium are thought to be rooms for guests, kitchens, and servants' quarters. All these rooms, irrespective of use, also contain beautiful mosaics. 

Panorama photo of the corridor (it is actually straight)

Detail from the corridor

Opposite the peristilium is the basilica across a large corridor, the width of the villa, to get to it. This corridor is just short of sixty metres long, and is three metres wide, and is covered with a mosaic of staggering dimensions. The mosaic tells the story of hunting and transporting of wild animals to Rome for the circuses, and runs for the entire length of the corridor. It is not only a beautiful work of art, but it provides a lot of detail about the techniques, equipment, clothing, etc of the era.

The basilica with the roof imitating
what the original was probably like.

The basilica itself is the only room which doesn't have a mosaic floor. Instead, it's floor is made of marble which was a much more expensive, (read prestigious), than any mosaic floor no matter how intricate. The marble for the floor was sourced from as far away as the near east, Africa, northern Italy, etc. The basilica was huge and was used for business and legal matters, and it was at the same time a measure of your wealth and importance. There were suites of rooms on both sides of the basilica. The smaller of the two is thought to be offices where business was conducted, and the larger suite was where the family lived and went for privacy, as much of the rest of the villa was essentially open to the public. Opposite the family suite were two bedrooms thought to be for domestic servants. There was another living room off the triclinium, probably for guests to use.

Off to one side, but still part of the villa is another huge courtyard with three small rooms on each side, and this leads into the most enormous dining room or perhaps banqueting room would be a better title. This was the true reflection of the wealth of the owner, because dining your guests with fabulous meals was not a cheap undertaking. What you could afford to place on your table was an indication of your affluence. The usual was seven courses with two servants to serve each guest. No mean undertaking. Obviously to achieve this you also needed a large kitchen, but this was placed a distance away from the dining room, no doubt to keep the cooking smells and general din away from the guests.

This villa houses the famous Roman bikini girls mosaic

Last, but not least, is the bath house. This was actually the first building we went in to, and this is where you realised that this place was special. This is where you see the first of the stunning mosaics that decorate virtually every room of the villa. The bath house was very important to the Roman citizen, and so the larger the bath house included in a villa complex, the more prestige afforded to the owner. It is speculated that up to thirty people could have used this bath house at any one time, so this meant that there would have been sixty slaves attending to the users. Mixed, nude bathing was the norm. One progressed through a bath house as follows: change room, exercise room, sauna, hot water bath, acclimatisation room, massage room, cold room, cold bath, then out. All the hot rooms were on the south side to take advantage of the warmth of the sun during the day. There was also a gymnasium attached to the bath house.

Portion of the banqueting hall floor

Although the use of the villa declined, and was perhaps even abandoned during Roman times, it was used during the Byzantine era because a kiln of that era was discovered in one of the rooms. Although walls of it remained above the surface, the discovery of the mosaics and the villa's completeness only occurred in the twentieth century which was fortuitous. It appears that some of the mosaics have been removed, but many are intact. There were 21 different stones and 16 different types of vitreous paste and glass used to make the tesserae for the mosaic. It is estimated that it would take a worker six days to lay one square metre of mosaic. Although the villa replaced an earlier one, the present complex was built all at once, so there must have been an army of workers constructing it. Those currently responsible for the villa have done a fabulous job constructing the protective building over the site. For instance, they have actually constructed a ceiling and apse over the basilica completely in keeping with what would have been there when it was lived in. It was all most impressive. There were information boards for all rooms, in both Italian and English which we really appreciated. We came away from the villa absolutely gob-smacked. Words are inadequate, but we know that any other villa or mosaic we see will pale into insignificance. In fact, if you ever see any pictures of Roman mosaics, it is likely that they will be of those found at this site.

View from the castle at Enna
Many towns are perched on the top of hills in Sicily

Before leaving the site we booked a hotel for the night in Enna, pretty well in the middle of the town. Enna is another hill town, 931m above sea level and the highest in Sicily, with a very long history - Greek, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, then repeatedly fortified during the Middle Ages by the Angevins (Plantagenets) and Aragonese (Spanish). It is essentially in the centre of the island, and it is said that you can see all coasts from here although with the smoke haze we had not chance. Its central position is probably also why it was strategically important to all those wanting to control the island. Our hotel was actually Art Deco, so very modern by comparison with some of the buildings around it. We arrived in plenty of time so went out to explore the town before dinner. There is still a very fine castle at one end of the promontory on which Enna sits. The three courtyards cover a very large area, and are still being excavated. The tower, thought to have been built in the 13th century, has a splendid view over the surrounding countryside, provided the visibility is good. There is still uncertainty over which bits were built by whom, and by the fact that over the centuries several small churches were built within the walls after the castle fell into disuse. The archeology is not clear. From the castle we climbed another small hill which gave you an even better view. We wondered why the castle wasn't built here and could only conclude that there was no water available. The Greeks had built a temple on this site, but of course it had no defensive purpose.
In Enna we found the first war memorial we have seen in Sicily, and it was more a peace memorial than a commemorative one. It is interesting, because the population must have suffered under the Germans, and then when the Allies invaded. Perhaps those most affected emigrated to places like Australia to get away from the memories.