The Neapolis Archaeological Park

Getting there

The motorhome stays at the Von Platen area, the Comune's one behind the Paolo Orsi museum, and you walk to the park: it is a little over a kilometre, westwards.

• The visitors' entrance is in largo dell'Anfiteatro, with the ticket office next to the gate. The ticket office for organised groups is further down, towards viale Augusto, and the ticket office for the INDA performances is yet another, in via Luigi Bernabò Brea
• Between the Von Platen area and the park lie the Paolo Orsi museum and the sanctuary of the Madonna delle Lacrime: anyone who also wants to see the museum has it on the way
• From the park Ortigia is much further away than the Von Platen area: it is better to come to the park from the stopover, and go down to Ortigia afterwards

Practical information

Contacts

Where it is

Siracusa · Sicilia

You set off from

Notes

• Hours and prices taken from the Park's official page on 28 October 2026: from 25 to 31 October the park is open every day from 8:30 to 17:15, and the ticket office closes at 16:00, an hour and a quarter earlier. The Park publishes its hours one month at a time: those for November and December can be read at the start of the month, on the opening hours page
• The ticket: full price 14 euros, reduced 7 for European citizens between 18 and 25. On the first Sunday of every month entry is free for everyone. The Paolo Orsi museum is a separate ticket, 10 euros, reduced 5, and it is closed on Monday
• The Greek Theatre is attributed to the architect Damocopos, known as Myrilla. What you see is the skeleton of the building, cut into the rock of the hill: the cavea measures 138.60 metres in diameter and originally had 67 rows of steps, divided by eight small stairways into nine sectors. The blocks built on top of the rock were taken away in the sixteenth century, for the Spanish fortifications of Ortigia
• On the corridor halfway up the cavea the names carved in the stone can still be read: in the centre Olympian Zeus, to the east Heracles, to the west King Hiero II, Queen Philistis his wife and Nereis, his daughter-in-law. The small house at the top of the tiers, the "casa dei mugnai", the millers' house, is what remains of the sixteenth century water mills
• Above the theatre rises the via dei Sepolcri, the Street of Tombs, a road of the Hellenistic age sunk into the rock, with Byzantine tombs cut into its walls
• The Latomia del Paradiso was a quarry with galleries, with walls up to forty metres high: earthquakes brought down the roofs, and in the centre a pillar of rock is still standing. The name comes from the Greek paradeisos, the garden, and inside an old citrus grove gives shade
• The Ear of Dionysius is a cave about 23 metres high, between 5 and 11 wide, which goes 65 metres into the rock along a winding course. According to the Park it got its name from Caravaggio, who saw it in 1608 during his stay in Sicily, for its shape like the outer ear and for the echo. Legend has it that the tyrant Dionysius listened to the prisoners here; the shape actually comes from the digging, which followed the line of an aqueduct
• The Grotta dei Cordari, next to it, was used for three centuries by ropemakers twisting hemp, until 1983. The Region announced its reopening in February 2021, together with the Grotta del Salnitro and a new route inside the Latomia di Santa Venera, the one with hundreds of small votive niches cut into the rock. Whether it can be entered today, the Park's page does not say
• The Altar of Hiero II was the largest known altar of the Greek world: 192 metres long, one stadion, and almost 23 wide. 450 bulls were sacrificed on it for the Eleutheria, the festival of Zeus the Liberator. The upper part was dismantled in the sixteenth century for the same fortifications of Ortigia, and what remains is the base cut into the rock and the feet of the telamons
• The Roman amphitheatre dates from the Augustan age or shortly after, and the Park calls it the largest of the three in Sicily: 140 metres by 119 on the outside, with an arena of 70 by 32. On the parapets of the front row are carved the names of the officials who sat there
• The INDA classical performances return to the theatre every spring. In 2027 the season runs from 7 May to 25 June, with Aristophanes' Birds and Euripides' Trojan Women in May, Sophocles' Philoctetes and Ulisse, l'ultima Odissea, in June; performances start at 19:00 in May and at 19:30 in June. Tickets cost from 35 to 72 euros, and are bought at the INDA box office, 0931 487248, or on TicketOne
• The next first Sundays of the month are 1 November and 6 December 2026

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