{"id":1275,"date":"2017-05-08T15:54:28","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T15:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sayjack.net\/?p=1275"},"modified":"2017-05-15T17:58:42","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T17:58:42","slug":"day-3-historic-sites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/?p=1275","title":{"rendered":"Day 3: Historic Sites"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Van transfers are easy– bikes go on top of Andiamo van..<\/p><\/div>\n

(Note to readers: \u00a0just noticed that I failed to publish this post, written about Day 3. Sorry it’s so wildly out of chronological order!<\/em>) \u00a0At 8 o\u2019clock Saturday morning, we loaded our bikes onto the Andiamo van and drove off\u00a0to visit two historic sites before launching our bike ride\u00a0to Cefalu. \u00a0The historic sites provided a good excuse for us to\u00a0cut down the mileage of the day\u2019s ride–it would have taken two days to ride bikes\u00a0 from Caltagione to Cefalu, and we had a date with the Giro in Cefalu on Monday.<\/p>\n

Villa Romana de Casale was our first stop, a hunting villa of a Roman noble or emperor from 290 AD. \u00a0It was concealed by\u00a0a mudslide in the 13th century and rediscovered and excavated by archeologists beginning\u00a0in the 19th century. \u00a0The immense power of a Roman noble impressed us, as did the presumed number of slaves needed to build and operate such an opulent estate.<\/p>\n

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Entrance portico to Villa Romana di Casale (looking out). The estate features 50 rooms, including guest rooms, two kitchens, four dining rooms of various sizes, baths, servants quarters and a large basilica for holding court.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The villa is famous for its mosaic tile floors, many still intact. Here is the much-discussed “Bikini Girls” floor of the, um, “sport room.”<\/p><\/div>\n

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Another floor mosaic–a cyclops character\u00a0returning from a hunt–from the anteroom of the noble’s private quarters<\/p><\/div>\n

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Behind the scenes to the family’s latrine with tile floor. It appears to have been a “5 seater” with no evidence of privacy partitions. \u00a0The moat-like gap is a deep stone-lined trench that can be flushed with water directed down from the hill above.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Fortress turret atop rocky bluff at Enna. \u00a0OK, these photos don’t capture the rugged topography below the fortress well.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Later in the morning we visited the hilltop fortress of Enna, dating from the Greek epoch, 400 BC.\u00a0 Once again, the stone-cutting, water-sourcing and engineering needed to make such a fortress seemed incredible for a year so early in recorded Western history.<\/p>\n

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View of part of fortress interior. The fortress covers more than an acre and includes water springs. With rocky bluffs providing its base on 3 sides, it was a natural fortress difficult to attack.<\/p><\/div>\n

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View of neighboring town on next\u00a0hill.<\/p><\/div>\n

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(Note to readers: \u00a0just noticed that I failed to publish this post, written about Day 3. Sorry it’s so wildly out of chronological order!) \u00a0At 8 o\u2019clock Saturday morning, we loaded our bikes onto the Andiamo van and drove off\u00a0to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[53],"class_list":["post-1275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cycling","tag-sicily-100th-giro"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/58.VillaLatrine.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3QqGi-kz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sayjack.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}