Our tour guide in Siracusa, Valeria de Mauro, took us to the ruins of the Temple of Apollo (6th century BCE) and to the former Jewish Quarter, where a mikvah (we were not in town at the right time for a tour) was found beneath a hotel and where some of the walls of San Giovanni Batista Church remain, bearing a stone in the apse with Hebrew lettering. Other evidence confirms that a synagogue was previously on this site. The local priests do not concur, so Valeria has been asked not to tell this story. She has resisted their entreaties, and during our tour had another disagreement with one of the young priests in the Duomo piazza. We also visited the cathedral, where 5th century Greek temple (to Athena) columns were used in the conversion to a church in the 7th century, and, in the 9th century, Arabs converted it to a mosque, using it until the Normans (Roger I) conquered the area and reclaimed the church. Today there are 15 Jews in Siracusa, led by a retired doctor, Stefano di Mauro (a last name connection with Valeria), from Miami, who returned as a Sephardic rabbi to his native Siracusa in 2008.

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