Athens' classical rival rebuilt as Baroque Ortygia after 1693
Syracuse, southeastern Sicily's municipal capital, held about 115,636 people as of 2025. Once among the classical world's largest cities—rivaling Athens in power and drawing admiration even from enemies—it later became a Spanish fortress whose island core Ortygia took Baroque form after the 1693 earthquake.
People lived here long before the Greeks: the Neolithic Stentinello culture, named for a coastal site just north of the city, left artefacts dating to around 6000 BC. By Thucydides' reckoning, Corinthian settlers led by Archias landed on the island of Ortygia in 733 BC and drove out the Sicels. Nobody is sure what the name means; it first appears on 6th-century BC coins, and suggestions include a Sicel marsh name meaning plentiful water, an Indo-European word for saltwater, or a Semitic term for east or the sirocco.
The colony expanded fast, swallowing nearby land under a long series of tyrants and oligarchies punctuated by short democratic interludes. Standout rulers included Gelon, Hiero I, Dionysius I, Agathocles and Hiero II, as well as the Corinthian general Timoleon, whose moderate regime lasted about ten years. Syracuse became Carthage's great rival for Sicily, and their alternating wars and treaties shaped the island's Greek history. Athens tried and failed to conquer it, and Archimedes, born here, directed its defence during the Roman siege of 212 BC.
Its importance outlasted antiquity. Emperor Constans II ruled the Byzantine Empire from Syracuse between 663 and 668, and it remained Sicily's capital until the Muslim invasion of 878 shifted power to Palermo. After the Christian reconquest it became a Norman county, and under Spain it was turned into a fortress. The earthquake of 1693 flattened much of Ortygia, whose rebuilding gave the old centre its present Baroque look.
In 1943 the armistice between Italy and the Allies, the Armistice of Cassibile, was signed just southwest of the city. Syracuse, with 115,636 residents, is now Sicily's fourth city after Palermo, Catania and Messina, and since 2005 it has shared UNESCO World Heritage status with the rock-cut Necropolis of Pantalica.
Source: Syracuse, Sicily
