Roman Mosaics at Villa Romana del Casale, Sicily, Italy

Sicily's Villa Romana del Casale is a remnant of a time when Rome dominated Sicily, and the economy was booming with exports of wheat and olives.  The villa is about the size of Bill Gate's house, around 30,000 square feet, with about 40 rooms.  A wealthy merchant built it to serve as his residence, but also as the thermal baths for the whole town. It's an amazing place to visit because almost every room has an elaborate, well-preserved Roman mosaic floor.

[See my two previous trip reports on Sicily here and here.]

In this small portion of a single giant mosaic (over two hundred feet long and fifteen feet across) we see the capture of wildebeest-like creature.  The subject of the whole mosaic is various big game captures for exhibition fights in a Roman arena.  In terms of scale, all of the mosaics contain approximately life-sized figures.  The segment below is about seven feet from top to bottom.

Note the interesting detail that they placed a wooden plank over the horns of the animal to prevent injuries to the handlers.

Things didn't always go smoothly...

The mosaics are amazingly well-preserved because the entire villa was engulfed by a mudslide around the year 1200 AD.  The The villa had been built in the early 4th century AD, and was rediscovered in the early 1900's.  The villa is near the town of Piazza Armerina.

In this segment of the same mosaic, an antelope and an ostrich are loaded onto a Roman ship.  I think it's cool how the color of the anchor changes to indicate that part of it is submerged.  Also, the clothes the people wear, and even the hull of the ship, were elaborately decorated.

From this section of the same mosaic, we can see that these Roman ships had both sails and oars.

Seeing this extreme luxury in an obscure, hilly region of Sicily, far from the coast, makes me wonder how many more piazzas like this were, or are, scattered among the hills of Sicily.

Again, in the same monumental game hunt mosaic, we see something that looks like a combination of a hippo and a rhinoceros being captured, while a dog splashes in the water. As in earlier parts of the mosaic, the submerged parts of the dog and rhino are colored grey.

Continuing along the same long mosaic, we come to this scene of a tiger mother (we can tell she is a mother by her nipples) looking at a reflective glass sphere in which shes sees a miniature reflection of herself.  The mother believes that she is seeing a tiger cub in the sphere.  The Romans used this tactic to distract a mother tiger while they captured her cubs.

This one seems to show the mother Tiger captured.

The mosaic below shows a successful fishing expedition.  I believe tuna are the large fish in the boat, but there are several other species depicted in detail, as well as a squid.  I can't decide what the spotted thing is supposed to be - maybe a type of ray?  It looks like the shore is bordered by some luxurious buildings.

I'll bring this post to an end with the bikinis of Villa Romana del Casale.  The entire floor of this room is covered in these larger-than-life-sized women participating in a tournament.

The winner receives a laurel branch on the left.

Stromboli's Volcano, and other Aeolian Islands

As much as we travel, we still have a snafu every once in a while.  In the Aeolians, we got off the ferry on the wrong island.  The Aeolians are a chain of volcanic islands just north of Sicily.  The best way to get to the islands, assuming you have no private yacht available, is to hop on a hovercraft ferry from the town of Milazzo, which is situated on a peninsula reaching north toward the islands.

[This article is the second in a series on our trip to Sicily.  The previous article is here.]

Yes, we'd bought ferry tickets to Lipari, but we had no idea the ferry would stop on the island of Volcan first.  So, when the ferry arrived at an island, we got off.  We called up our hotel to ask them to pick us up from the port.  When we told them what restaurant we were waiting at, they said "I know that restaurant, but it's not on Lipari, it's on Volcan."  Whaaaaat?!?

No worries, we were already having an excellent lunch on a comfortable terrace with a view of the sea.  I got new tickets from the ferry ticket office right next to the restaurant, and the next ferry arrived a few minutes after we were done with lunch.

The next day we set out on an all-day, multi-island boat excursion.  The big attraction of the trip was to see the volcano on the island of Stromboli erupting at night.  We had some misgivings when we got on the boat, because they said, "We have to warn you it's rough seas today."  Luckily, the seas really weren't that bad.
For most of the trip, we sat on benches on the upper deck.  At times, the boat rolled uncomfortably far to one side and then the other.  A few big, cold sprays slapped us in the face as the boat plowed into crazy waves. When they knew it was about to get really soaking wet up there, the crew suggested we come downstairs.  In this photo, the captain is looking out the windshield on the left and the horizon is seen at a funny angle through the boat cabin door.  The boy was getting his thrills with the waves.

World Cup fever was everywhere.  Boys were playing "football" all over.

We passed this James Bond-ish island on the way from Panarea to Stromboli.  One of the best parts of this whole experience was the color of the water out there.  It was such a pure, luminous blue, not too dark - just a hint of white in it.  Simply seeing that rich, pure color, a corner of nature mankind hasn't yet degraded momentarily lifted the weight of this terribly screwed-up world off my chest.  

The big attraction of the excursion was the hope of seeing Stromboli's volcano erupting at night.  This was the view of Stromboli as we approached.

We disembarked on Stromboli mid-afternoon.  The two of us spent some time on a black sand beach. We lucked into real Italian wood-fired oven pizza for dinner.  After that, it was getting dark enough for lava watching.

Only a minute after the boat pulled up to a good spot for volcano watching, we saw the first spray of glowing orange lava light up the low-hanging clouds.  [Photographic caveat - these photos are embarrassingly bad.  This is a worst-case scenario for taking photos - it's dark, you're rocking back and forth on a boat, AND the lava is in motion!!  Next time, I'll have to hike in with a tripod.  Of course, that would entail a bit more risk.]

Enough excuses.  Finally!  We actually got to see glowing orange lava in real life!  Our first time ever.  Pretty amazing.

The volcano threw lava into the air about every 30 seconds.  We kept watching for about half an hour.

Then the captain pushed the engine to full throttle, and we were on our way home at high speed on choppy water.  We could still see an orange glow of lava lighting up the clouds as Stromboli receded from view.  The boat bucking under us was enough to make a few unfortunate passengers seasick.  We rode on the back deck, outside under the stars.  But what was gross, and also a questionable practice, was that the crew kept squeezing past us to throw bulging white plastic sick bags into the ocean.  Thank goodness our stomachs remained true.  Neither of us got nauseous from the waves, or the sight of those bags!

Finally, we arrived back at the small harbor of Lipari.

Next Sicily trip report - numerous huge Roman mosaics at Villa Romana del Casale.

Previous Sicily trip report - Mount Etna.

Blown Away On Top of Mount Etna, Sicily's Volcano

The wind was shoving us so hard, we had to crouch low, or simply sit, for fear of being blown off the thin black ridge of the crater.  We were on a sort of shifting sea of black lava gravel, on one of the summits of Mount Etna.  You can see the dust cloud created by the "jet stream" flying off the top of Etna here.

. Nearby, other people were sitting down, turning around, or debating whether to go forward.  Still others forged ahead along the ridge, hunched over, gripping hats, leaning into the wind.

Not a living thing in sight.  No trees, bushes, or even weeds. Recent eruptions burned, buried, and otherwise wiped out, all signs of life

This powerful wind is created as the air mass moves up the 11000' slope of Etna, which is many miles across, and gets compressed into a jet blast just as it reaches the lip of the crater. We had our doubts.  After a few minutes of taking photos, we decided to turn around, partly because the view from the other parts of the rim were no different from where we'd already reached.  I have to admit there was a bit of self-preservation that went into the decision.  I've been through several hurricanes in Houston, but this felt far, far stronger than anything I've felt before.

In the photo below, the Mediterranean Sea and a very long beach appear in the background, miles away.

When Obi Wan Kenobi turns Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader by dismembering him and leaving him to die, George Lucas used a major eruption of Mount Etna as the background footage: Obi Wan Kenobi vs. Anakin Skywalker.  Here are some excellent photos of the Etna eruption, without the light sabers.  Thinking about those eruptions, we wondered about the reliability of the Sicilian authorities' volcano monitoring program.  We didn't have the privilege of seeing such awesome eruptions. but we did see clouds of brownish smoke ejected  from another crater that was closed off to hiking.  So, we can honestly say we almost DIED!

Down at the lower altitudes a few alien plants have begun to reestablish themselves on the desolate black lava gravel.

We were staying in Taormina, a town on the water, only an hour drive away from the start of the Mount Etna hike.   It's a small town, with an impressive Roman theater sitting at the top of the hill.  This is a view from the seats toward the stage.  These Romans had a pretty nice life, except for the slaves.

This cactus, and these trees full of yellow fur-ball blossoms were growing on the hill behind the Roman theater seating.  [A smart person on the Lonely Planet forum read this post and told me these trees are mimosa trees.] A yucca cactus of this size and coloration reminds me of Mexico, so it was weird to see it there.  I'd never seen trees with blossoms quite like these either.  

Taormina had a lot of great gelato.  I've been missing it ever since returning to Paris.

Click here to see our photos of the Aeolian Islands off the coast of Sicily.

Click here to read about mosaics at a Roman villa in Sicily with tiger hunting and more.