The archaeological civic museum of Noto will reopen in Syracuse next spring, after thirty long years of closure. It will be set up in the lower reaches of the Santissimo Salvatore, in what was once the Benedictine Monastery, with a series of stained glass windows overlooking the main street of the Baroque city, Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Closed after the 1990 earthquake, a host of new finds recently excavated can now be found in the museum.
A long resurrection, that of the Archaeological Civic Museum of Noto, made possible thanks to funding from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport. There will be ten new rooms, each with an expository theme regarding the historical period. There will also be a series of thematic rooms dedicated to Ancient Noto, the Eloro colony, the Roman and also the Byzantine era. As the archaeologist Laura Falesi, curator of the set-up of the soon to open archaeological civic museum, tells us, “It is a ‘small’ museum that has the great objective of representing the vast cultural territory of Noto, whose extension is 550 square kilometers, larger than the island of Malta, and within which there are small and large archaeological sites, each of which is of great importance”.
The return of the artifacts to the new Netino museum is also the result of the Bonfanti administration’s commitment to restoring the history of the Baroque city to the entire community. And of the two agreements signed with the Archaeological Park of Syracuse and Villa del Tellaro in July 2020 and with the Superintendency of Syracuse last December.
The museum will convey a rather complex cultural and historical stratification. There will be rooms dedicated to Castelluccio – where traces of first human settlements were found in Noto Antica – the city built on Mount Alveria destroyed by the 1693 earthquake. Human settlements dating back to the Iron Age, in the area of Monte Finocchitto and Grotta Sbriulia can also be found. The once Greek colony of Eloro in Villa del Tellaro, represents a precious testimony of the Roman period. These sites will be represented with the finds that will be periodically replaced. A constantly evolving museum adds the archaeologist and president of Archeoclub Italia in the Noto section.
Inside the museum, visitors will be accompanied on a cultural and historical journey, including outside, to discover the archaeological sites from which the findings come. For the Noto Antica section of the new archaeological civic museum, there will also be a ‘semi-empty’ showcase. So that the finds found from the ‘construction site in progress’ in Noto – of the Federico II University of Naples – and thanks to the projects for the enhancement of the territory, can have their space”
The museum will be careful to ensure its usability by everyone. There will be educational tools, such as information panels. For the vision impaired, there will be a dedicated path and the possibility to touch artifacts and bas-reliefs.
Marvel at the wonders of this baroque town of Syracuse by incorporating it into your Classic Sicily itinerary.
