Ear of Dionysius

We are in Syracuse, the most powerful city in the Mediterranean in the fifth century BC. The remains of that era are still visible today walking around the city: columns, temples, theaters, a spectacular Archaeological Museum. Among them, just a few steps from the famous Greek theater here is this cavity, probably a latomia, characterized by a sinuous entrance in the shape of a donkey’s ear that coined this name of Dionysius Ear to the seventeenth-century painter Caravaggio. Precisely because of this curious conformation of the entrance, the cave has a very special acoustics that makes the sounds absolutely unique. There is no Sicilian child who has not gone on a school trip and there is no visitor to the island that has not admired or drawn or tried to sing in it!

(photo) Orecchio di Dionisio, Siracusa, Jean-Pierre Houel, 1777