Friday, June 1, 2018

Return To Our All-Time Favorite Doric/Baroque Temple/Cathedral, 2018

Still on our walk around Ortigia. We visited Siricusa's cathedral in 2011, and were knocked out by this Baroque cathedral plopped down undisguisedly on a 5th century BC Doric temple. It is amazing, and we have seen very few things to compare. Maybe the Mezquita, in its way. Usually, triumphant religions/regimes destroy all traces of predecessors and competitors. Not this time. It's one of those things that warrants revisiting. And I hope to see it again.
Exterior, approaching the Piazza Minerva; the Doric columns
are plainly visible

Piazza Minerva



















Facade of the cathedral


West entry; OK, these columns are not Doric; but on the
other side...
Nave: what was the cella of the Doric temple


On the south aisle, huge, fluted Doric columns



West end: the Christians simply turned things around, making
the head of the Greek temple now the end, the cella the nave,
adding an apse at the entry to the Greek temple; and bricking
the whole thing up...

South aisle



Font said to be part of the original temple



Back out on the piazza, heading for the next church and Caravaggio's
Deposition of St. Lucia


Parthian shot, which I couldn't resist; of all Italian sites, except possibly the
Sistine Chapel, this is the most fiercely patrolled: "NO FOTOS!" It is also the
origin of my theory of Caravaggio's butt-centric aesthetics

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