Syracuse, after 40 years the Grotta dei Cordari reopens

PALERMO – Almost forty years after its closure, the Grotta dei Cordari will reopen in the «Latomia del Paradiso», in the monumental area of ​​Neapolis in Syracuse, not far from the more famous Ear of Dionysus. Known in the Greek age as a stone quarry and prison, the area was subsequently transformed into a garden, with its scenographic effects caused by the succession of large “rooms” with polychrome hues, by the vegetation of mosses and maidenhair ferns, by amplified pillars and false pillars by the presence of rainwater or water coming from some groundwater. The signs of the tip of the pickaxes that in ancient times extracted the stone are still visible.

The cave of the Cordari for three centuries and, until the 1980s, it represented the place where Syracusan artisans produced ropes with the traditional hand wheel system. The closure, with the abandonment by the last cordaro, dates back to 1983. In recent weeks, the maintenance and cleaning of the places from weeds are in progress, which the director of the «Archaeological and Landscape Park of Syracuse, Eloro, Villa del Tellaro and Akrai », Carlo Staffile, started in this period of closure due to Covid. “2021 will give visitors who will have Syracuse as their destination – underlines the Councilor for Cultural Heritage, Alberto Samonà – one more show”.