Villa Romana del Casale

Today was always going to be a bus-ticket and a prayer and I wasn't certain I'd reach the room I've booked for tonight but I was determined to get to the Villa Romana del Casale. (For its importance, see here, for pictures, see here and click on 'images'.)

At 6:30 I left my room, bags packed for collecting later, and set off for the bus stop. Couldn't find it but I had just enough time to walk onwards to the bus station where I might even be able to switch my now-redundant morning ticket to Caltanissetta to an evening one. No, no time for that but at least I caught the bus to Piazza Armerina.

40 minutes later I was casting around for a taxi to take me the 6km to the Roman villa site. None, but there was a sign on a lamp-post with two taxi numbers. No answer from the first. The second told me he'd be back in town in 90 minutes, roughly how long it would take me to walk to the site. I started walking, feeling foolish for not having booked onto a tour group. Once I was far enough out of town for destinations to be clear, I stuck my thumb out as I walked. It's a very long time since I've hitched abroad but a driver soon stopped, a man who works at the Roman villa with his own stall selling guidebooks and postcards. Perfect. Right to the door and I was very happy to 'pay' for my lift by buying what looked like a reasonable guidebook with some good photos. He showed me the UNESCO logo inside but I'm not naive about self-publishing.

I was the first person of the day to the ticket office, about 20 minutes before it opened, and after I got in I had the site to myself for a while. The guide book was great, telling me slightly more than the site labels and helping me orientate myself. Soon the tour groups started arriving, filling the narrow walkways over the mosaics, where I just wanted to stand and stare, and exposing everyone to commentaries, informed or banal. Gradually the tsunami passed, leaving the site to independent visitors. I felt smug for not having booked a tour.

Highlights: I loved the 60m long mosaic floor showing Romans collecting animals and birds from Africa and loading them onto boats at Carthage. Less so knowing that they were being transported for circus games, rather than being saved from a flood, but the pictures were a delight. I loved the children's bird-propelled mini-chariot races. There was some impressive detail in mosaic fabrics and some fine geometric patterns.

Low points: the number of unprotected mosaics that visitors could walk on and the visible amount of damage done to outdoor mosaics since the photos in my guidebook were taken (published 2019). I took the top photo of my blip today and the bottom one is from the guidebook. What originally determined me to come to Sicily was visiting Roman sites in Libya in 2007, seeing superb mosaics and hearing that the skills had been brought from Sicily. In major sites in Libya we saw the edges of mosaic floors disappearing into the sand, even at the height of their brief period of allowing foreigners in to see, and I've been wondering what has happened to them since the country closed again in 2011. I really did not expect to see unprotected Roman mosaics here.

Apropos, I was interested that my guide book and some of the guides said that some of the mosaicists came from North Africa. I guess that, as with most creativity, there was a to-and-fro of ideas and skills.

A superb visit at my own pace.

I went to say farewell to my lift of this morning and he told me about a shuttle bus back into town!

Back to Enna, back to the room to collect my bag, on to a two-hour wait at the bus-stop. I was confident I could get as far as Caltanissetta with SAIS Autolinee but they had told me SAIS did not go to Agrigento and although Trenitalia's app had charged me three times for a bus-replacement service there, it had issued no ticket and I wasn't sure there even was a bus. But at Caltanissetta I discovered another company, SAIS Trasporti, which does go to Agrigento, faster and cheaper than the bus replacement service, so all is well. I have a bed to get into. Now.

Extras
- view of Piazza Armerina from my walk out of town
- green roof in Enna