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Taormina myth |
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The name's myth and origin |
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The
first name of the town was
Tauromenium,
which is up to now preserved even if transformed in
Taormina, and it means built up area in
Tauro,
the mountain upon which it rose.
According to the
historian
Diodoro,
Siculians and Greeks too gave that name to the town.
But there are a lot of
legends around the origin of the name. One of these
tales is about a Minotauro, which is represented in
ancient coins, and by which
the name could derive.
Another evokes two princes
from Palestina, Taurus and Menia, who would have
founded the town, giving it the Tauromena name.
Around Taormina there are
other many legends.
Some of them have
Pitagora
as protagonist, who would
have spoken in the same day to Taormina and to
Metaponto, would have made Taormina adopt the laws
of Caronda, would have placated the erotic furies of
a young taorminese playing his magic flute.
In
reality, Pitagora lived a historical period in which
Tauromenium was not still founded. |
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The age of tourism |
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Guy
de Maupassant
in "La Vie errante",
1885, wrote: "if
somebody might pass one day
only in Sicily and asked:
What should I visit? I would
answer without hesitate:
Taormina".
Perfumed with zagara and
jasmines,
Taormina
became through the
centuries, with its
wonderful views, with the
sweetness
of its climate,
the rich history and
precious monuments, a
tourist international
centre, more and more famousand wanted.
It would be more correct,
however, to say that
Taormina was born touristic.
The Siculi had chosen it as
their home city. And after
them the Greeks, Romans,
Byzantines and Saracens, in
other words
all its
conquerors, inhabited
Taormina for long periods
and not only because of
political vicissitudes.
The Normans, particularly,
consecrated it like a
tourist residential center
and it became, since then,
centre for congresses
and
conferences, visits and
stays.
If we wanted to anchor the
tourist modern history of
Taormina to an initial date,
we could settle down the
date of
1870,
year in which the Siracusa-Catania-Messina
railroad was completed.
Another important event was
the inauguration in 1873
of the Hotel Timeo.
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In
1904 the most important
hotels in Taormina, as it
results in a publication
printed in New York, were
Hotel San Domenico,
Hotel Timeo,
Hotel
Metropole,
Hotel
Castello a Mare,
Hotel
Naumachie,
Hotel Victoria.
In more than one hundred
years the tourism in
Taormina have had ups and
downs.
But the town is still
the dream of the tourists
from all the world who love
the beauties of nature and
art.
In 1770
Patrick Brydone
arrived in Taormina and in
1787 the town was discovered
by J.
W. Goethe (accompanied
by the draftsman Kniep) who
dedicated exalting pages to
the city in his book
entitled "Journey to Italy".
Filippo Calandruccio
in "Beehive" writes
that "the travellers
went and came in number
always increasing and a lot
of them represented
artistically their emotional
reactions".
But it was only about the
end of the 19th century that
Taormina reached the apex of
the notoriety as place of
international stay.
Nobles
and well-off English men
started to acquire more and
more villas. Soon there came
also the North Americans,
Austro-Hungarians, Baltics,
Belgians, Swiss, Dutchs,
Germans.
The most
prestigious characters of
the whole Europe visited
Taormina. |
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Taormina
is famous as an
international tourist centre
thanks to
Otto
Geleng, a young
red-haired Prussian painter,
best known in his
hometown
of Berlin for his fine
paintings, which he composed
and painted in Italy but
exhibited in Germany.
What distinguishes Geleng,
however, is his choice to
depict the more southern
regions where he captured
the spectacular views and
lights of Sicily.
He often painted the Greek
colonial ruins' areas,
including Taormina.
It was Geleng's views that made its
beauty talked about
throughout Europe and turned
the site into a famous
tourist center.
The artist arrived in Sicily
at the age of 20 in search
of new subjects for his
paintings.
On his way
through Taormina he was so
enamoured by the landscape
that he decided to stop for
the winter.
Geleng began to paint
everything that Taormina
offered: ruins, sea,
mountains, none of which
were familiar to the rest of
Europe.
When his paintings
were later exhibited in
Berlin and Paris, many
critics accused Geleng of
having an 'unbridled
imagination'.
At that, Geleng challenged
them all to go to Taormina
with him, promising that he
wouid pay everyone's
expenses if he was not
telling
the truth.
He went
back to Taormina, created
the first hotel out of a
noble mansion, now called
the Timeo Hotel, and that
was that: those
paintings
reflected the reality of
absolutely unique natural
wonders. |
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In
the late 19th century, another German,
Wilhelm von Gloeden,
had his photographs distributed all over the world,
especially
those of nude boys adorned with crowns of
laurel which made Berlin's upper classes go into
raptures.
He was claimed to be minor
German aristocrat from
Mecklenburg. Suffering
from what appears to have been tuberculosis, he came
to Taormina in
1876.
He was wealthy and also scrupulously shared the
proceeds of his sales with his models, providing a
considerable economic boost
in this comparativily
poor region of Italy, which might explain why the
homosexual aspects of his life and work were
generally tolerated by the locals.
During the early 20th
century the town became a colony of expatriate
artists, writers, and intellectuals.
D. H. Lawrence
stayed here at the
Fontana Vecchia from
1920 to 1922, and wrote a number of his poems,
novels, short stories, and essays, and a travel
book, "Sea
and Sardinia".
He writes: "Here we feel
as if we lived for a thousands of years.
I know that Taormina isn't
waiting only for me, it waits for all men."
Charles Webster Leadbeater,
the theosophical author, found out that Taormina had
the right magnetics fields for
Jiddu Krishnamurti
to develop his talents.
In 1927 the young Icelandic
writer
Halld�r Laxness
(born 1902) published his
first major novel,
Vefarinn mikli fra
Kasmir (The Great Weaver of Kashmir), a
panorama of social, literary, religious and sexual
issues of his times. Laxness, who won the Nobel
prize for literature in 1955, wrote most of his
novel in Taormina which he then praised highly in
his book of autobiographical essays,
Skaldatimi (The Time
of the Poet) from 1963. |
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Between
1948 and 1999 the English
writer
Daphne Phelps
lived in the
Casa Cuseni
designed and built by
Robert
H. Kitson in 1905,
and entertained various
friends including
Bertrand Russell,
Roald Dahl,
and
Tennessee Williams.
Daphne Phelps, who has died
aged 94, was for nearly 60
years the dutiful custodian
and hospitable locandiera of
Casa Cuseni, the villa built
a century ago by
her uncle,
the artist Robert H. Kitson.
The site commands
spectacular views of Mount
Etna and the Bay of Naxos
over the rooftops of
Taormina, and has ample
cisterns to collect water
for the 13
garden terraces
and fountain courts.
Daphne
was also the author of A
House in Sicily
(1999), published by Virago,
which provides her account
of notable house guests and
local people who
enjoyed her
patronage.
Daphne embellished Casa
Cuseni's terraces and courts
with exotic plants and fruit
trees. These flourished in
the rich humus she produced,
according to the
principles
of the Soil Association, of
which she, encouraged by her
friend Michael Bruce, became
a life member.
The gardens and house,
itself a casa museo with a
unique dining room furnished
and decorated by
Sir Frank Brangwyn
and
Sir Alfred East,
have been declared
of
"cultural and historic
importance" by the Belle
Arti in Messina, and
Daphne's heirs intend to
maintain this legacy, one of
very few Sicilian properties
still in
the care of its
expatriate creators.
The family fortune was built
around Kitsons of Leeds,
locomotive manufacturers
from the 1830s. By the
1890s, Daphne's mother was
on her way up to the
stimulating company of Newnham College, Cambridge,
and met Alys and Bertrand
Russell, who put her name
forward to the Fabian
Society, and Sidney
and
Beatrice Webb, for
whom she undertook research
for their history of English
local government.
Marriage, 3 daughters and a
son, and the depressive
impact of
the first world
war on their father,
curtailed her activities -
and profoundly affected
Daphne. |
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After
St Felix School, Southwold,
Suffolk, she trained in
psychiatric social work at
St Anne's College, Oxford,
and the London School of
Economics. Seeking further
experience, she embarked for
New York in 1939. The war
blocked her return until August
1941, and her
hand-to-mouth existence
included taking a homesick
Benjamin Britten for
a drive on Long Island and
enjoying the hospitality of
the Russells on Lake Tahoe,
and in the
bizarre stockade
of the Barnes Foundation,
near Philadelphia. Back in
London, she worked in
Sir Solly Zuckerman's
team, researching the
effects of the blitz, and
then at the
London
Hospital before
joining the West Sussex
child guidance service, set
up by her guru from the LSE,
Dr
Kate Friedlander.
The death of her uncle
Robert in September 1947
redirected Daphne's life. He
had just returned to Casa
Cuseni, which had been
commandeered in turn by
Italian fascists, the German
high command, Lieutenant Alan
Whicker's Army Film
Unit, and, as a rest camp,
by a Canadian regiment.
Daphne went to sort out the
estate and sell up, but the
sale fell through, and by
then she had a good working
relationship with her
uncle's cook.
She reduced
costly commitments, fended
off local suitors with an
eye on her inheritance and
found she could just afford
to live there if she had
studio flats built on the
roof terrace and took paying
guests.
These were attracted
through an extensive network
of artists, writers,
academics and other
interesting people. Their
friends, children and
grandchildren were to
follow.
The first guests included
the artists
Julian Trevelyan
and his future wife,
Mary
Fedden. His father,
Bob, probably introduced
Kitson to Taormina where a
Trevelyan aunt had settled
many years before, and his
cousin, Raleigh, became a
regular visitor.
Gaylord Hauser took
the house and reputedly
entertained
Greta Garbo.
The Russells came, as did
the novelist
Jocelyn Brooke,
Dame
Janet Vaughan and
other Somerville College
alumni, Alison "Monroe of
Arabia" and Janet Adam
Smith, and Robina Addis of
the World Federation for
Mental Health. Dennis Mack
Smith of All Soul's College,
Oxford, drafted his History
of Sicily at Casa Cuseni.
Bob Macrae of Toronto
University drafted his study
of John Stuart Mill there.
Daphne had misgivings about
some guests, such as German
matrons whose songs she
associated with the Hitler
Youth, and she kept out
Caitlin Thomas,
widow of
Dylan,
with her clinking bottles.
But she always found room
for the wayward Kentucky
artist, Henry Faulkner, and
his menagerie, which
sometimes included Tennessee
Williams. |
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Daphne
provided a heaven for the
young people who came with
her nephew to support those
made homeless by the
Belice valley
earthquake of 1968, and the Italian archaeologists whore vealed
the ancient Greek city at Gela.
American guests
included
Alfred Barr
of New York's Museum of
Modern Art and academics
such as
Bette
and John McAndrew, the
architectural historian and
founding director of Save
Venice.
Bette McAndrew was so
impressed by Daphne's Venice
in Peril fundraising - she
opened the house to tour
groups and displayed its
collection of Venetian,
Moroccan and Balkan costumes
- that she left Daphne the
residue of her estate.
This
enabled her, in the 1980s,
to refenestrate the front of
Casa Cuseni.
Daphne did not publish her
recollections of her uncle's
close friend,
Don
Carlo Siligato, and
never wrote up her scabrous
tales
about the princes of
Biscari who lived
next door for some years,
but her accounts indicate
her close integration into
Sicilian life.
She was on
good terms with the same
Mafia boss as her uncle. And
she is remembered with
affection for continuing her
uncle's
support for the
hostel for the aged poor,
recommending struggling
restaurants and shops to her
guests, and patronising the
now
renowned
Macri marionette
theatre of Acireale.
Daphne found a soul mate in
her housekeeper, Concetta Cundari, who
shared her love of
horticulture, cooking,
children and dogs,
and was
given the house at the
garden gate for her family.
When aroused, Daphne was
formidable, and had no
difficulty gathering a
petition against the
demeaning appendage of her
uncle's
name to an unkempt
cul-de-sac. The Taormina Comune transferred it to a
prominent highway.
When Daphne had to give up
travelling to England, she
asked Concetta to implement
her donation of her uncle's
sketchbooks and a
selection
of his watercolours to Leeds
University, for which Kitson
had commissioned Brangwyn to design
the ceremonial verge on
its
foundation in 1905.
The success of
A
House in Sicily paid
for repairs and air
conditioning in her own
apartment during what she
termed her "yonderly"
years.
Many are glad to celebrate
Daphne's indomitable
vitality and her legacy to
future generations. |
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Among
so many artists and
lettered, we remember
Truman Capote,
El Salvador Dali',
Edmondo De Amicis,
Alexandre Dumas,
Gabriel Faure,
Anatole France,
Andre' Gide,
Paul Klee,
Gustav Klimt,
Luigi Pirandello,
Leonardo Sciascia,
John Steinbeck,
Oscar Wilde.
Among musicians and
conductors we remember
Johannes Brahms,
Leonard Bernstein,
Nikita Magaloff,
Richard Wagner.
Among the men of cinema,
theater and performance we
remember
Michelangelo Antonioni,
Ingmar Bergman,
Francis Ford Coppola,
Marlene Dietrich,
Eleonora Duse,
Federico Fellini,
Cary Grant,
Marcello Mastroianni,
Gregory Peck,
Tyrone Power.
Among the men of State,
magnates of finance and
ruling families we remember
Willy Brandt,
Lord Carrington,
Alcide De Gasperi,
Kaiser William II,
King Juan II of Bourbon,
Urho Kekkonen,
Francois Mitterand,
Grand Duke Paul of Russia,
Sandro Pertini,
Rothschild,
Humbert I of Italy.
Pietro
Rizzo writes in his
"Tauromenium" book:
"From the Tauro Mount,
from the Theater, from the
Vergin Mary of the Fortress
Church and from the Castle,
the sight flows freely from
the mountains to the sea and
to the coast horizon of the
south toward Catania,
through the slopes to the
smoking crater of the
immense and imposing Etna.
Northward we could admire
the lines of the coast,
always beautiful and
picturesque, which runs
toward Messina. From those
different places
perspectives open out before
our eyes and marvelous
landscapes of light and
color, fluffy distances and
verdant hills,
foreshortenings and rural
profiles and steep and
leaning cliffs, green
balconies crowned of white
cottages and sea beaches on
which the shades of the
beach houses are inverted
reflected in the water under
a clear and dazzling
brightness..."
Filippo Calandruccio
writes in Beehive:
"as reading The Thousand
and One Nights one feels
himself like Bulukiya, the
young sultan who goes around
the roads of the world to
meet Mohammed and to placate
his anxiety of search which
will be placated by an
island seldom enchantment,
very similar to the heaven
of the Islam. Now this
Taormina, glad island, is
reality and it is fable." |
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Johannes
Wolfang Goethe
writes:
"View extends for the long
hilly ridge of the Etna, for
the beach to Catania, and
farther as far as Siracusa.
The colossal smoking volcano
closes the endless view,
without rawness, because the
atmospheric vapours make it
appear farther and fairer.
If then we look at the
passages built behind the
anlookers, here on the left
there are walls of rock, and
between these and the sea
there is the road
which winds toward Messina, and
groups and hoards of rocks,
the coast of Calabria in the
last background, which you
could perceive only
carefully
watching through
the clouds that sweetly
rise.
Seeing how this country, in
all its interesting details,
sunk into an abyss, has been
a scene of inexpressible
beauty."
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Alexandre
Dumas writes:
"...We went into raptures at
the sight of Taormina.
On our left, closing the
horizon, Etna rose, that sky
column, as Pindaro called
it, which with its violet
mass was silhouetted against
the reddish sky because
all
crossed by the borning rays
of the sun.
In a second plan, two tawny
montains which one could
have said covered with a
boundless skin of lion.
After having appreciated a
so great view, magnificent
and bright, -so that Jadin,
impressed, didn't want to
make either a sketch, -we
turned the bow
towards the
east." |
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Guy
de Maupassant writes:
"If somebody might pass one
day only in Sicily and
asked: "What should I
visit?" I would answer
without hesitate:
"Taormina".
It is only a landscape, but
a landscape in which you can
find all that seems to be
created on earth to seduce
the eyes, mind and fantasy.
Where are the peoples who
could make, today, things
like these?
Where are the men able in
building, for the crowd
pleasure, works like these?
Those men, the ones of a
time, had soul and eyes
different from the ours; in
their veins, with blood,
flowed something lost: love
and cult for Beauty."
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Edmondo
De Amicis writes:
"...What you see is a view
that Naples, Constantinople
and Rio de Janeiro haven't
so great. Down, you see the
little smiling town, which
extends as
an arc among
almond and orange trees,
cactuses, pines; on the back
of the town, an half-circle
of mountains which rush at
sky its rocky vertexes
crowned with castles and
villages; further on there
is the huge Etna, with its
white head coloured with
pink, overhanging the Jonio
Sea, and it seems
that it
advances to dip there its
flank; on the right and on
the left you see almost the
whole eastern coast of
Sicily...and this huge view
of breasts, promontories,
woods, villages, gardens
smiles upon the sea beauty
and under the sky beauty of
which the human word
couldn't give idea.
I don't
believe in hell, but in
paradise, because I've seen
it ....and it's this one." |
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Truman
Capote writes:
"...Sicilian spring begins
in January, and it gathers
in a bouquet worthy for a
queen, in the garden of a
magician where all is in
bloom.
April, writes Eliot, is the
cruellest month: but not
here.
Here it's bright, as the
snow on the Etna...
I noticed with surprise, sat
on that wall, an old man
with velvet pants, winded in
a black mantle...It was an
astonishing theatrical
apparition and
nothing more;
only after having watched
with more attention I
noticed he was Andr�
Gide..."
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Taormina
history |
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The Greek civilization
In
the VIII century BC
the Greek
sailors
avoided
landing at the Sicilian coasts, because
they were afraid of encountering with
Sicels,
considered cruel. However
it seems that the Athenian sailor
Theokles,
been shipwrecked on the Oriental coasts of
Sicily, ascertained the favorable
climate and fertility of the earth. Come
back in Athen, he prepared an expedition
of Dorians,
Ionians, Chalcedons. Then he
returned to the island. This is the
story taled by the Greek historian Eforo.
Putting aside from
the truthfulness of
this episode, is sure that Greeks,
prevented to expand toward the powerful
empires of Asia Minor, they
were forced
to look for the colonial expansion in
Sicily and subsequently in Southern
Italy, strong also for their advanced naval
art. In 735
BC groups of greek colonists, with Achaeans from the Northern
Peloponnese, Dorians and Chalcedons,
land at the
Oriental Sicilian coasts.
Probably the first founded colony had the name of
Naxos
because many of them originated from
the island
of Naxos
in the
Egeo. They called, besides,
Tauro
Mount the rocky high ground which
overhangs the lowland,
finding it
similar to those of the Tauro in Asia
Minor. Sicels, who lived in that
lowland, were forced to retire on the
mountain.
The proof of the
Sicels
existence on the Tauro Mount was given
from the Necropolis
of Cocolonazzo in
Castelmola,
discovered in 1919. While
the Greek colonization initially
contained itself in some zones of the
shore, with
Dionysus
senior
(432-367
BC), tyrant of
Syracuse,
it was carried to the whole Sicily. The
expansionistic design carried Dionysus
to fight
against Sicels and
Carthaginians, who occupied the Western Sicily. The Tauro Mount, for its natural position,
constituted a
strong obstacle to this colonialistic plan. In fact, the Sicels
who garrisoned the Mountain prevented
from passing the troops
of Dionysus
directed to Messina and, beyond, to
Reggio, Croton, Metaponto, Sibari.
Not
succeeding in getting the possession of
the stronghold pacifically, the tyrant
tried to occupy it with the strength. |
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In
403 BC he besieged Naxos and with the
complicity of a traitor,
Prokles, he
was able to conquer it. The town, which
for more than three centuries, exactly
for 332 years, had developed pacifically
with the agriculture, sheeprearing and
trade, was set on fire and destroyed.
The historian Pausania (II c. A.D.) writes that
the destruction of Naxos was so total
that, in his times, neither the ruins
existed anymore. After the conquest of
Naxos, Dionysus encircled the Mountain
with siege. In one night without moon,
raving a snow and wind storm, his
troops, climbing up the precipices of
the Mountain, succeeded to take
possession of the acropolis, placed
where the greek theater rises. But
Sicels, roused by the shouts of alarm of
the look-outs, came all together and
succeeded in chasing away again
Syracusans. Dionysus, defeated, removed
the siege and returned to Syracuse. But,
as a treatise stipulated with
Carthaginians some time after, exactly
in 392 BC, he succeeded equally in
possession of the Mountain. People
retain that
Tauromenium
was founded in 396
BCE by
Andromachus,
father of the famous historian
Timaeus,
who engaged the government of the town.
The town, placed upon a high ground, 205
metres above sea level, was an
impregnable place, above all because
three
of its sides were consituted by
dreadful canyons, which threw headlong
directly to sea. Despite that, for a
surer defense of the polis, Tauromeniti
added mighty walls on the northen and
southern sides, according to the
Hellenic defensive system, which
provided for a triplex curtain of walls
and only two entries to the town. The
walls are visible up to now and the
ancient gates of the town still exist.
During its richest period, the
population of Tauromenium counted 12.000 inhabitants.
The dominant language was the doric
dialect. The first arrangement of the
polis was elaborated by Andromaco and it
was affected on marble tables. Fourteen
of these tables are still guarded in the
little ancient Theater Museum. The
leader of the polis was the
Eponymous.
He continued in office during one year
and couldn't be elected again. Other
public magistrates were the Strategists,
"Ginnasiarchi"
and "Proagori". People
reunited to elect the magistrates in the
agora, placed in the actual Square
Abbey. |
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Tauromenium entrusted
the military order for the duration of
ten years to a hellenic patriot named
Tyndarion,
because it had
to defend from the
dangerous raids of
Mamertines
(mercenaries in the pay of Syracuse), so
called for the Mamerte god.
Mamertines,
in 288 BC, after having conquered
Messina,
they pushed forward as far as under the
wall of the Tauromenium polis,
but Tyndarion was able to defend it and save it.
Worried by the danger of new raids
of Mamertines and above all for the
hostile intentions of
Syracusans,
in 278 Tindarione asked
for help to
Pyrrhus,
king of the Epirus.
The latter reached Tauromenium, greeted with enthusiasm by
Tindarione himself, but he didn't
succeeded in the enterprise.
Agathocles,
tyrant of Syracuse, succeeded in fact in
subduing the town.
The historian
Timaeus,
son of
Andromachus,
founder of Tauromenium, cause of his
opposition to the tyrant was exiled in
Athens,
where he lived during 50 years and died,
in 261 BC, at the age of 90 years.
After
the Agathocles death, Syracuse was led
by Geron II,
who recognized to the Tauromeniti the
autonomy, but he subdued
them to the
payment of the tithe, a tax which
subtracted part of the wealth producted
during the year.
However it was for the
polis a period of shine and of economic
comfort.
Tauromeniti could devote
themselves to the construction of the
Theater,
Naumachy,
aqueducts.
Nevertheless there was the
danger of
Carthaginians
for Tauromenium, cause they had tried to
expand from Western Sicily to the
Oriental part occupied by the
Greek-Sicilian colonies.
They had
already, with their mighty army,
devastated and destroyed different
cities, among which
Selinus,
Himera,
Agrigento,
Camerina
and
Gela. |
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The
Romans
Another
more serious danger appeared, still, not
only for
Tauromenium,
but for the whole Sicily: the
Romans.
In 264 BC the Romans arrived in Sicily
called for help by Mamertines from
Messina. Syracuse, which after the death
of Gerone II had stopped the politics of
alliance with Rome, was attached and
razed to the ground by the Roman army,
leaded by the
Consul
Marcus Claudius Marcellus.
Population was massacred and died then
the great
Archimedes
too.
Tauromenium, to avoid the destructions
and sacks which Syracuse suffered,
started a friendly politics with Rome
and, in 212 BC, it submitted to the
capital. This action determined in
Sicily the end of the greek
civilization's period of maximum
splendor.
Caesar
Octavian
made of Tauromenium a Roman colony,
removing many of its inhabitants and
populating it with Roman families.
Attracted by the beauty and mild
climate, many consuls retiring to
private life chose it as place where
rest. Many famous Roman families built
luxurious villas in the most pleasant or
close to the sea places to reside there
permanently. Spisone place took its name
from
Piso's
family and
Calpurnia's
people. Via Iallia Bassia
took its name from the matron
Julia
Basilia. Mufabi
region
took its name from the villa built by
the
Fabius'
family. Having submitted at once to
Rome, Tauromenium was the first free and
federate civitas among the 52 cities in
the island. Thanks to this recognition,
it was exempted from the tributes
towards Rome and many privileges were
granted to Tauromeniti, the Roman
citizenship inclusive. The town enjoyed
a period of peace up to
133 BC, during which Geron II ordered
the restructuration of the Greek Theater
(that's why today the ancient Theater is
called
Greek-Roman), the construction of new
monuments and he gave also an impulse to
the urbanistic development.
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In
the same period the struggle for
supremacy and existence developed
between Rome and Carthage; struggle
which lasted 120
years (264-146 BC) and
that ended with the destruction of
Carthage,
in 146 BC, after the
Three
Punic Wars.
The definitive
expulsion of the
Carthaginians from the island is due to
the Romans, but Sicily and Tauromenium
didn't ever become Latin.
Tauromenium
preserved its Greek speaking up to the
birth of the vernacular in the Norman-Swabian
period. A proof of that stays
in the
fact that the bishop
Teofono Cerameo
pronounced his homilies still in Greek.
The Roman empire's history embraces five
centuries, from 31 BC. to 476 AD. This
historical phase is characterized by
crisis and disorders, civic struggles,
social
transformations. Limiting the
attention to Sicily, we notice that the
inexorable decadence continued in all
the fields and for a long
time
misgovernment reigned in the island. The
rural ownership tended to disappear,
cause it was ill-treated by the fiscal
increases.
The agrarian zones of the
island became prey for the italic
speculators and the number of
disinherited people increased. Such
impoverishment, determined by more and
more greedy impositions, exasperated the
agriculturists, who rebelled against
Rome. The
revolts, which established an
awakening of the island independence's
feelings, were called
the revolts of the
slaves
(135-132 and
104-101 BC).
Born in Sicily and fed in Rome by the
work of the people's tribune, the
Tiberio
and
Caio
Gracco
brothers,
revolts
involved Tauromenium too. Dozens
of thousands of farmers and slaves,
leaded by
Euno,
rose up against the landowners and
occupied
Enna,
Agrigento,
Catania
and Tauromenium. Rome
sent the consul
Fulvio
Flacco
with the order to tame rebels. He
besieged
Tauromenium and as he didn't
succeed in occupying it, the consuls
Lucio Pisone
and
Publio Rupilio
came to his help (two streets
of
Taormina remember these two consuls up
to now). Rebels
barricaded in the town and, though they
had exhausted the provisions,
resisted
for a long time (it seems that to
survive they even forced themselves to
the anthropophagy). For the betrayal of
one slave
only, named
Sepadone,
the Rupilio consul succeeded in entering
the town. The captured rebels were
killed atrociously or they
were
chained and brought to Rome to make
an exhibition of themselves in the
circuses, making them fight against
starving lions. |
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During
the whole domination period different
episodes marked how difficoult the
integration with Rome was to the
Tauromeniti.
In the Taormina's forum a
statue in memory of the magistrate
Gaio Verre
was built, when, in 73 BC, he was sent
to Sicily to administer justice.
Verre
was immediately recognized as a thief of
art masterpieces and extortioner.
He
pretended, despite the town enjoyed the
tax exemption, a great deal of wheat,
provisions and even ships.
Citizens
decided to react and, with the
complicity of one dark night, they threw
down his statue.
Then they minced it and
spread the pieces, leaving only the base
to accent the outrage.
The town
collaborated, instead, with
Marco
Tullio Cicero,
when he came to Taormina to collect
informations and useful proofs to accuse
Verre in Senate.
Verre, guessing what
was coming next, went into exile by
himself in Marseille, where he died in
43 BC.
Cicero, satisfied for the Verre's
escape, didn't read, in front of the
Superior Senatorial Court, the five
famous orations, called
Verrine
(in
Verrem).
He red the first only and
published the others.
In these orations
he wrote sharply and acutely a lot of
news about Taormina.
After Verre,
Tauromenium suffered the cupidity of
another Magistrate,
Sistus
Pompeius,
son of
Pompeius
the Great, then captured and
killed by
Anthony
in Mileto. |
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The Christianity
Roman Empire
failed, just for some time in
progressive degeneration. Three were the
principal reasons for the collapse: the
process of infiltration of
Barbarians
in the most elevated ranks of the
administrative offices; the pressures on
the borders and the
following
territorial infiltrations, in addition
to the
Arabs,
of powerful North European tribes (Vandals,
Visigoths,
Alemannics, Erulos,
Huns);
the
Christianity
rising and prodigious spreading. The
Christian faith and doctrine, born in
Palestina,
soon spread in the
Roman world,
threatening with the religious, cultural
and social scaffolding on which it was
founded upon the empire from the
foundations. The Romans reacted with
determination, persecuting mercilessly
the Christians. In spite of that, the
strength of the
faith and ideas of the
Christianity forcefully imposed and the
new religion soon arrived to Tauromenium
too.
Pancras
from Antioch
was named Bishop
by
Peter
Apostle
and he was sent to
Tauromenium
with the mission of evangelizing
Sicilians.
He arrived in 40
BC, when the emperor
was
Caligula,
and practiced the apostolate for 60
years. In the island the diffusion of
the Christianity was
slow and difficult,
because hindered by the persisting of
pagan cults and by the continuous rising
up of heretical and schismatic
movements. But Sicily too counts many
martyrdoms for faith, above all in the
humblest classes. Among these ones the
bishop
Pancras who, in 100 AD, was
pierced through and stoned by the
Gentiles. For the martyrdom immediately
he was glorified and
today S. Pancras is
the protector of the town. In the fourth
and in the fifth century After Christ,
when the island was invaded
first by the Vandals and then by
the
Goths,
the Christians continued in being
persecuted and oppressed.
Tauromenium
has been an Episcopalian center up to
1082, till this one came abolished by
the
Roger
Count of Altavilla,
first
Norman
conqueror in Sicily.
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The Arabs
When
the
Roman Empire of West failed (V
century AD), on the southern coasts of
Sicily the
Arabs began to raid, inciting people
to the
Holy War against the unfaithful
Christians. Their raids continued in
VII, VIII, IX centuries. In 827 they
came with more than ten thousands of men
with the purpose of conquering the whole
Sicily. They landed at
Mazara and completed the invasion
with the conquer of Tauromenium in 902.
The town resisted the assaults till when
the emir succeeded in going into the
town from Cuseni
Gate, then called the Gate of
Saracens, just to remember the
unhappy invasion. The town was sacked
and destroyed. Women, old men and
children, wherever they were, into the
churches too, were slaughtered.
Monuments and churches were knocked
down. The bishop of Tauromenium, Procopio,
fugitive, was recognized and captured.
Ibrahim
ordered to pull out Procopio's heart
from his breast and ate it behind the
people. Procopio's martyrdom was painted
in a fresco which we can admire in the
Church of Saint Pancratius. Survivors
were sold as slaves. Girls on one hand
were bought by the caliph to populate
the harems
of
Baghdad, on the other they were sold
as brod-mares to mingle the
Mediterranean race with the Arab one.
According to the legend, the firmament
too cried for the dreadful massacre of
Tauromenium. In reality, during that
night in Aug 10, 902, the sky brighted
for a plentful rain of meteorites.
In
909 Christians rebuilt the town, but in
962 the Arabs, after a siege which
lasted seven months, conquered and
sacked it again.
The
caliph called it
Almoezia
and since then the arab domination
lasted two centuries and half. While the
Arabs were plundering and blood-thirsty
in their assaults, in administration of
territories they were wise. They brought
innovations in agricolture (production
of honey, mulberry,
orange and
lemon), in irrigation systems and
techniques for captation of waters.
Classic philosophy was spread and
studies in medicine, chemistry and
mathematics progressed (the still in use
system of numbering is the arab one).
They adopted a system for the collection
of taxes which was less oppressive. They
fostered the forming of little property
and relieved the slaves condition.
During the Arab domination, Christians
could live according to their religious
faith; the only one forbidden thing was
building new churches, bringing the
cross during the procession, ringing the
bells. It was then that, close to the
old towers, were built minarets and
mullions. About the Arab architecture,
Sicily has no more a lot, because the
Normans destroyed all the mosques. In
each town of the island and, then, in
Taormina too, we can find some traces of
the arab domination. In a particular
manner, the arab presence brought a
significant linguistic enrichment.
Islamism brought progress not only
to Sicily, but to Southern Europe too,
to Middle East and to East. All that
aroused alarm in the
Roman Church.
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Normans and
Swabians
The
pontifical politics entrusted the
enterprise against the
Arabs to the
Normans who, leaded by
Tancredi of Altavilla, were the
soldiers most dangerous for greed of
prey and audacity. In 1078
Roger, the younger Tancredi's son,
stormed Almoezia and the
town took back
the name of Tauromenium.
In 1087 the
Normans occupied the whole island and
they had from now on the problem to cure
the awful wounds caused by the
war. They
were excellent in this assignment,
demonstrating to be one of the most
enlightened dynasties at that time.
With
them a new age of prosperity began for
Sicily. They didn't send away the Arabs
from the island having a tolerant
spirit;
they removed the leaders only,
relegating them in the castles of
Calabria, Puglia and Irpinia.
They
assigned the lands with the privilege of
perpetual immunity to the monastic
orders of Greek obedience and to the
Catholic
bishoprics. They reopened the
buildings for the christian cult,
allowing that the bells were again
hoisted on the churches.
The sovereign
dominion was imposeded on the waters and
on the woods. The right to pasture on
the State lands was recognized
to the
citizen. The commercial exchanges, at
last, revived the island, even if the
barter was still persisting. The
pre-existing
official language - a
mixture of Greek with Arab language-
changed and the common language got rich
of new lexical acquisitions,
syntactic
and phonetic. It was then that the
so-called vernacular language began to be
speaked. The Norman dynasty ended in
the
last decades of the XII century. After the Normans,
Sicily was dominated
by the
Swabians.
Frederic the Second (1194-1250)
wwas one of the most enlighteneded
protagonist in his time. During his
kingdom, Taormina enjoyed a period of
prosperity which
never in other times. The Swabian dominion, however, didn't last for a lot of time, also for the
hostility of the papacy.
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The Angevins and Aragoneses
In
1266 the french pope
Clement IV crowned the angevin
Charles king of Sicily. Taormina,
Catania, Caltanissetta, Agrigento and
other cities refused the coronation and
took sides with Konrad of Sweden, who was only 16
years old. He was not ready to face the
more expert Charles for the obvious
inexperience because of his youngness.
In October 29, 1268 he was defeated and
cruelly beheaded in the market-place of
Naples. Subsequently, the Charles's
army, composed by loot-thirsty
adventurers, occupied Sicily. Thus began
what people defined the bad dominion of
Angevins. Citizens were subjected to new
taxes and even to the so-called regal
collections. Civic services suffered
drastic restrictions. Discomfort due to
the French oppressions led, in March 31,
1282, to the rebellion which belongs to
history as the
Sicilian Vespers. Revolt, begun in
Palermo, stretched at once in a lot
of Sicilian cities. Its charge for
independence involved Taormina too,
where the French monks were forced to
escape from monasteries. Palermo,
determined in sending away
Angevins from Sicily, asked for
intervention to the king
Peter III of Aragon. He landed in
Marsala and
in few time conquered the
whole isle. The military occupation due
to Peter III determined a new breaking
in the reign of the Two Sicilies: the
peninsular part, leaded by Naples,
remained under the Angevins dominion,
while the isle passed under the
Aragoneses one. In 1302, with the
peace treaty of Caltabellotta,
Frederic III of Aragon was awarded
the isle, but with the prohibition to
take the title of king of Sicily. Dead
in 1337, his son
Peter II succeeded Frederic III,
mentioned in the testament as universal
heir and, transgressed the treaty,
successor of the Sicilian reign. He died
in 1342. Since that date to unification
Sicily was ruled by regents. In 1348,
plague, the
Black Death, propagated in the isle
brought by the boats which came from
east. After 90 years of war between
Angevins and Aragoneses, in 1372 the
peace was reached: to the
Aragonese family was finally
recognized the title of
King of Sicily.
In 1395
Martin I was crowned King of Sicily.
Hardly 18 years old he had married Mary
of Aragon, Frederic III's daughter. He
died in 1409 without legitimate heirs.
The Sicilian
Parliament met in Taormina, in Corvaja Palace,
and nominated successor Martin the
Great. He left the administration of
Sicily to the daughter-in-law, whom
Martin junior had married in second
weddings. The definitive submission of
Sicily to Spain brought a period of
stability and the isle was no more
theatre for wars. But it again was
oppressed with taxes. The
Thirty Years' War, broken in 1618,
forced Spain to sustain huge costs and
Sicily was forced to contribute with
huge subsidies.
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The Savoy and
Hasburg's kingdom
In
1713, with
the treaty of Utrecht, Sicily, taken
away from Spain, came assigned to
Vittorio Amedeo II of Savoy, with
title
and dignity of kingdom.
His brief
reign was characterized by the struggle
with the Pope for the rights of
ecclesiastical legation (privilege for
the
sovereign to practice the
jurisdiction also in ecclesiastical
subjects).
In June 1714, Vittorio Amedeo
II came to visit Taormina with his wife,
Ann of Orleans.
During the domination of
Savoy, Spain was just about to
reconquer Sicily.
To prevent the Spanish
occupation Vittorio Amedeo II promoted
an alliance among Austria, England and
France.
Austria agreed to
undertake but with the condition that,
defeated Spain, Sicily would have passed
to the dominion of the
Hasburg's
kingdom.
To compensate the loss of
Sicily, the Savoy's reign would have had
Sardinia in exchange for it.
A
bloody war followed, that ended, in
1718, with the defeat of the
Spanish reign.
Thanks to the accord
among the allies, Sicily passed to the
Hasburg's reign.
The Austrian
occupation in the island lasted around 3
years.
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The Bourbons
In
1734, with the
Viennese peace treaty, Sicily came
back to the spanish power, under the
bourbon
Charles III.
It was so that the
reign unity of Sicily and Naples was reconstitued (that is the
Reign of the Two Sicilies).
Enlightenment produced its effects in
Sicily too. In this period the pest's epidemic,
that struck Messina in the 1743 AD,
saved Taormina, how the licences of
healthiness, released to the residents,
testify.
Despite the absolute monarchy,
they made reforms in each field.
Particularly, they limited the feudality
powers and made stop the clergy
privileges.
The Sant'Uffizio, notorious organ of
the
Inquisition, came suppressed.
The
juridical, philosophical and literary
studies spread rapidly.
They realized in
Taormina important works,among which the
Messina-Catania
road and the one which from the sea
leads to the city (the today's
Pirandello street).
In 1808,
Ferdinand II of Bourbon, king of the
Two Sicilies, came to visit Taormina.
To
remember the event, a coat of arms of
the bourbon family was placed in the
upper part of Messina Gate: an eagle which
feeds two eaglets.
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The
Unification
of Italy
The
Spanish dominion of Bourbons went on up
to 1860. The ideas of the
Risorgimento and the feelings of
liberty and national
unity had set on
fire for some time by now also many
Sicilian minds and hearts.
Quite a lot
of patriots had to run away from
Taormina for the bourbon repression,
leaded by a certain Giuseppe
Maniscalco.
In the Christmas
night in 1856 a lot of conspirators were
arrested by the police at the Rosa Calatabiano's
House.
The court of Messina condemned
to 18 years of prison Luigi Pellegrino,
to 16 years Vincenzo
Vadala', to 14
years Carmelo
Barca,
to 2 years the abbot Don
Salvatore Cacciola and other men.
We have to remember also Don Agostino da Taormina,
enlightened patriot.
When, in spring
1860,
Garibaldi disembarked at
Marsala to
free Sicily, many patriots fought with
him to send away forever the
Bourbons.
A
committee leaded by the captain Luciano Crisafulli
was formed at Taormina.
This skilled
strategist succeeded in avoiding the
fight, which could have been very
bloody, with the bourbon contingent in retreat
leaded by the general Clary.
The Garibaldians arrived in Taormina the 3rd of August
1860, leaded by
Nino Bixio, who slept at the baron
Giovanni
Platania's
house.
In autumn 1860
Sicily was annexed to
Piedmont and, then, to the
Italian Kingdom.
Taormina stopped
being the centre of the Sicilian
political and military circumstances.
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