The main Duomo of Siracuse is built on the heights of Ortigia, a site that was already sacred when the Greeks arrived and started a 5th century BC temple to Athena. This building had world-famous decorations, and huge gilded statue of the goddess on the roof, which caught the sun's rays and acted as a beacon for sailors.
The current cathedral, rebuilt after the earthquake, still uses the Doric columns as its skeleton. They are literally in the walls. The internal shape is thus very much that classically proportioned, simple rectangle, and is also spare and dusky. Some Norman columns also still stand, adding a further angularity to the lines. Off to the south side, a number of small chapels have been added, and these are decorated in full Baroque extravagance, with cherubs and friezes and leaves and scrolls and angels and apostles and everything else that could be crammed into the space. You wander from the dim sobriety of the temple to these fantasias and back again as if in a bipolar religious mania.
The façade is Baroque, but as with most of the period's external decoration in Siracuse, it is restrained and formal. The piazza in front of it is beautiful, and pedestrianised so very pleasant. We saw three Guardia pushing an electric cart with a flat battery, which made everybody in the café laugh.