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Santuario della Madonna delle Lacrime
Photo: Salvo Cannizzaro, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This church is a huge concrete cone built from 1966 but only completed in 1994, inspired by a mass-produced Madonna statue that is said to have cried real tears in 1953. The interior is a great circular expanse, with six of the 20-some side spaces dedicated as chapels, with the tower above like some colossal machine part. The lower floor or crypt is an equally large circular space.
The Basilica of the Madonna delle Lacrime, also called Madonnina delle Lacrime is a 20th-century Roman Catholic Marian shrine church in Syracuse in Sicily, Italy. The modern building, derided by some as an inverted ice-cream cone, dominates the skyline of the approach to Ortigia.
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The second most important archeology museum in Sicily.
Church and catacombs of San Giovanni (St. John)
An underground necropolis dating back to the 4th century AD.
Archaeological Area
East side of Via Cavallari are the ticket offices, a large parking lot for buses, toilets & fast food, and a vast display of tourist tat. Buy tickets there or across the road at the complex of ruins and sights on the west side. The order of listings below follows the recommended itinerary, though you're not tied to it, so if one area is congested by tour groups, it's easy to skip and come back to it later.
Roman amphitheatre
Built 60-40 BC under Augustus or Julius Caesar, this is mostly carved out of the hillside, with no superstructure surviving. So effectively it's a grassy pit 140 m long by 119 m wide, and you'll have to use your imagination to see the tiered seating and walkways. The pit in the centre held machinery for stage effects.
Basilica di Santa Lucia
Also known as Chiesa di Santa Lucia fuori le mura as it was behind the walls (extra moenia) a Byzantine church built, according to tradition, in the same place of the martyrdom of the saint in 303 AD. The current appearance is from the 15th-16th centuries. The most ancient parts still preserved include the portal, the three half-circular apses and the first two orders of the belfry. Next to the church is located the sepolcro (tomb) of the Santa Lucia, at the place where she as regarded was executed. This church hosts "Burial of Saint Lucy" by Caravaggio which was located at the Chiesa di Santa Lucia alla Badia at the Piazza Duomo. Under the church there are catacombs which are not open to the public.
Altar of Hiero II
This massive piece of rock, 199 m long by 23 m wide, was the foundation block of an altar, the largest known from the ancient world. It was built by King Hiero II (who had Archimedes in his employ) some time before 200 BC. Nothing else remains of the temple here; classicists believe it was probably built to the glory of the deity Zeus, and definitely built to glorify Hiero himself.