A01=Joachim Sartorius
Ancient Ruins
August von Platen
Author_Joachim Sartorius
Baroque
Beauty
Category=DNC
Category=WTL
Cathedral
Colonization
Decline
Dionysius I
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eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
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eq_travel
Food
Giuseppe Monteleone
Greek Heritage
Happiness
History
Identity
Insecurity
Ionian Sea
Island
Latomia
Light
Lucio Tasca di Lignari
Mediterranean
Memory
Migration
Mythology
Nature
Religion
Sea
Solitude
Theatre
Time
Tradition
Travel
Urbanism
Product details
- ISBN 9781914982170
- Weight: 161g
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 19 Mar 2026
- Publisher: Haus Publishing
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Syracuse, on the eastern coast of Sicily, was one of the great cities of the ancient Mediterranean: a place of brute power, dazzling culture, and vivid myth. Here, tyrants waged wars and built vast palaces, Aeschylus staged tragedies, Plato hoped to create his ideal ‘philosopher king’, and the nymph Arethusa, transformed into water, lived on as a spring fringed with papyrus.
Moving to the city after a bereavement, the poet Joachim Sartorius discovers a place of haunting and haunted beauty, where the layers of the past are always visible. At his side we wander with demigods and generals through the old town of Ortigia and meet the people of the present-day city: its artists and police officers, café owners and barbers, barons and refugees.
Unravelling the threads of Sicilian history, Sartorius explores the city’s mingling of ancient and modern, Greek and Arab, medieval and baroque, creating a portrait of a city inseparably entwined with its past.
Moving to the city after a bereavement, the poet Joachim Sartorius discovers a place of haunting and haunted beauty, where the layers of the past are always visible. At his side we wander with demigods and generals through the old town of Ortigia and meet the people of the present-day city: its artists and police officers, café owners and barbers, barons and refugees.
Unravelling the threads of Sicilian history, Sartorius explores the city’s mingling of ancient and modern, Greek and Arab, medieval and baroque, creating a portrait of a city inseparably entwined with its past.
Joachim Sartorius is a poet, translator, and cultural critic. He grew up in Tunis and spent twenty years in the German diplomatic service in New York, Istanbul, and Nicosia. He was secretary general of the Goethe Institut until 2000, and from 2001-2011 he was director of the Berlin Festival. He is the author of My Cyprus and The Princes’ Islands.
Stephen Brown is a playwright, translator, and cultural critic.
