SKILLS AND FRILLS

Meet your private driver at your accommodation and relax on the ride to Piazza Armerina. Situated inland, on the southern slopes of the Erean mountains, this town is home to one of the island’s most extraordinary archaeological sites. Your private guide will be waiting for you at the excavations, ready to lead you back in time, on a tour of the ruins of a 4th century AD Roman mansion.

Due to its immense historic and artistic value, the ancient Villa del Casale has occupied its rightful place among Sicily’s World Heritage Sites since 1997. The building’s complex architectural layout and decoration provide a splendid example of what a luxury country house must have looked like in the late Imperial era. A monumental three-arched entrance led to a large courtyard which opened on to more than forty rooms, including private chambers, servants’ quarters, reception areas, a dining room and thermal baths, originally richly adorned with a triumphant display of fountains, statues, wall paintings and mosaics. Although the identity of its owner remains a mystery, historians believe the villa could well have belonged to an illustrious Roman patrician, probably a member of the Caput Mundi’s senatorial class, a governor or an imperial official, who idled the summers away in this palatial hunting lodge, feasting upon the beauties of the Sicilian landscape and bathing in his pool.

The most striking feature of the villa is the collection of amazingly well preserved polychrome mosaics extending over 3,500 square metres of floors. Following a landslide that occurred in the Middle Ages, these tesserae were covered beneath a deep layer of mud and sand that fortuitously protected them from the damaging effects of wind and rain for some seven hundred years, until their discovery in the 1950s. Assembled with painstaking accuracy into a variety of geometrical motifs, interweaving patterns and figurative themes, the mosaics of the Villa Romana del Casale attest to the skill and refinement of specialised craftsmen in the Late Antiquity and are a precious source of knowledge, both for their artistry and sociological significance. Representations of mythological episodes and scenes from the Roman aristocracy’s daily life offer a captivating glimpse into the habits and beliefs of yesteryear’s elite. Among the unforgettable compositions are the Hunting Scene, representing Roman warriors as they capture wild animals, and the exquisite Girls in bikinis, depicting young women clad in two-piece swimsuits exercising with a ball, disc and dumbbells.

After the tour and free time for lunch, rejoin your driver and set off for Sicily’s pottery capital to enjoy some independent sightseeing. Once a bustling medieval hub for trade and crafts, Caltagirone thrived under the Norman rule and enjoyed continuous properity until the fateful year of 1693 when a violent earthquake halted its development, turning the city into a heap of rubble. Survivors, however, demonstrated their resilience – an old Sicilian saying goes, Scàcciti juncu ca passa la china (literally meaning “Reed, bend because the flood is going to pass”) – and immediately set to work on the reconstruction of Caltagirone. In only ten years the city rose from its ashes and was gorgeously rebuilt with the frills and flair of the Baroque era, as attested by the fine 18th century churches and palazzi that can still be admired today.

More than eighty ceramic workshops keep alive a centuries-old tradition, scattering splashes of bright cobalt-blues, warm ochre yellows and mossy greens into the town’s alleys and squares. An abundance of clay deposits triggered the dawn of a flourishing production of terracotta ware as early as the 2nd century BC but it is to the Moors, who first introduced glazing techniques and sophisticated designs, that Caltagirone owes its fortunes and reputation as a centre of excellence in the field of ceramics. The city’s showpiece is undoubtedly the Staircase of Santa Maria del Monte, connecting lower Caltagirone with the older upper town, consisting of 142 stone steps adorned with hand-painted majolica tiles featuring intricate floral and geometrical patterns.

Enjoy a leisurely stroll through Caltagirone’s vibrant streets before returning to your accommodation in Ragusa.