Siracusa was really, as Pindaro tells us, “the greatest of the cities”, both under its ancient tyrants-mecenates (more often than not authoritative rather than despotic) but also when it was, even if briefly, Byzantine Capital of the Empire of Romans. Much of what was lost of that greatness isn’t because of the inclemency of the centuries and of the climate, but because of the actions of man, his anxiety of having to re evoke a memory which he judged inadequate to his “modernity”. So did the Romans, the Goths, the Lombards, the Byzantines, the Swabians and the Aragons and not even the Siracusani themselves held back between the 1800s and the 1900s, when they created in the city a series of urban fractures with no criteria and unfixable. Incapable of thinking of an expansion of the urban perimeter in an area far from the ancient monuments, they chose to defy and cancel squares, bastions, monumental doors, fortresses. The damage to the landscape and nature made after the Second World War in the North of Siracusa was enormous. Between Augusta (the ancient Mègara Hyblaea), Marina di Melilli and Priolo Gargallo (the prehistoric Thapsos) the largest petrochemical area in the Mediterranean was built, which resulted in poisoning the air and the ground, polluting the water and killing the sea and the coast.
Adding to this environmental and sanitary disaster is the disfigurement of the historic and archeological heritage as that great expanse of tarmac and cement, sheds, plants, refining towers, smokestacks, petroleum ducts, docks and thousands of kilometres of pipes, has eaten one of the most ancient proto historic centres of the Mediterranean. To give back dignity and liveability to this part of the coast isn’t an immense endeavour, started only a few decades ago with some uplifting results. The complaints and law actions against the refineries are innumerable, the seizure of plants which represent a strategic part of the national industry. Here in the year 2000 the Riserva Naturale Orientata Saline di Priolo was established which protects 55 hectares of the coastal area which was the landing site of the first Greek navigators and which enchanted poets such as Virgil, Ovid and Thucydides. This, together with other 12 nature reserves and areas of naturalistic interest make Siracusa the Sicilian Province with the highest number of protected areas. This is the product of a new concept of “sustainability”, which doesn’t refer to the economic development and financial growth of a collectivity, but to the physical, social and cultural areas in which to satisfy our needs and aspirations without endangering the future of the generations to come.
Written by Sergio G. Grasso, February 2021