Grotta del Ninfeo

Terrace of Temenite Hill

The grotta is located near the highest part of the little rocky relief, on a rectangular terrace which verges on the Greek theatre and opens at the centre of a stone wall where a closed portico in the form of an "L" was once found. At the entrance there were statues dedicated to the Muses, three of which (dated to the 2nd century BC) are still preserved and are on display at the Museo archeologico regionale Paolo Orsi. The fountain is dedicated to the Ancient Greek cult of the nymphs, nature goddesses. The name nymphaeum for a monumental, decorated fountain derives from this.

The Syracusan nymphaeum is thought to have been the ancient location of the Mouseion (the sanctuary of the Muses), seat of the artistic guild, where the Syracusan actors gathered before descending into the theatre to put on comedies and tragedies in the time of Epicharmus and Aeschylus.

Regarding the Grotta del Ninfeo, the Syracusan Giuseppe Politi wrote in the nineteenth century:

There, with squared niches of various dimensions on all sides for votive tables and epitaphs, and further cells for catacombs, was a corridor in the living rock which we call the Sepulchral street and a large grotto opens at one point, with vestiges on the outside of triglyphs and with two aqueducts at the bottom, one vertically perpendicular to the other, encounter an artificial crack in the rock. This grotta is perennially supplied with water by one of these, on account of which it is called the Grotta dell'acqua. It may have originally been for the use of the victorious Ephebes of the Academy of Music just like the one that Pausanias says was at the Theatre of Athens. Alternatively, perhaps more likely, a nymphaeum, i.e. a grotto decorated with many statues of the nymphs, with water sports, as the name suggests. …

Depiction by Jean Hoüel

During one of his trips to Syracuse in the second half of the 1700s, the painter Jean-Pierre Houël depicted the Grotta del Ninfeo as he found it. The gouache shows a much deeper grotta than today, with water descending towards the theatre, where the mills were installed. In the grotta, some women are busy making cloth.