Museo Archeologico Regionale Di Kamarina

Near Scoglitti there are the ruins of the city of Camarina.

The city is spread over three surrounding hills on which temples such as the Athenaion dedicated to Athena and an extra-urban sanctuary dedicated to Persephone stand. The imposing city walls, some sections of which are still visible today, surrounded the city for almost seven kilometres.

The Museo Archeologico Regionale Di Kamarina, one of the most important in south-eastern Sicily, collects the archaeological documentation of this territory from prehistoric to medieval times, with particular reference to the Greek period, and it is divided as follows:

The Underwater Pavilion

The museum’s entrance hall, which also houses the press of the ancient farm millstone, displays a large number of artefacts from various periods. A group of anchors arranged along the outside wall of the Museum courtyard completes the underwater collection.

The Amphora Pavilion

Built in the cellar of the old farmhouse. The Camarine amphorae were reused mainly in the necropolar contexts of Rifriscolaro and Passo Marinaro according to the enchytrismos technique, which involved the burial of infants in large vessels.

The Prehistoric Room

This room presents the geological features, palaeontological events and the most characteristic human settlements in the area. Fossil remains of mammals are exhibited together with some Ancient Bronze Age finds from the numerous settlements identified along the Ragusa coastline.

The Archaic Necropolis and the Persephone Room

The first room gathers evidence from the approximately two thousand depositions in the necropolis and paints a vivid picture of the life of the early inhabitants of Camarna in its everyday life. The Persephone room, on the other hand, is dedicated to the female ex voto statuettes found: protomes, goddesses seated on thrones and figures carrying a piglet, the animal sacred to Persephone. To the sphere of the sacred also belong a circular stone altar and a terracotta arula, rectangular in shape, decorated with a figure of a Gorgon. To the Temple of Athena, on the other hand, belong a painted roof tile and two stone palmettes that originally adorned the long sides of the building.

The hall of the Temple of Athena

One can imagine the grandeur of a Greek temple of yore from the remains preserved in this room: the embankment, part of the foundations and the access ramp of the pronaos are all that remain in fact, together with part of the south wall of the cella, partially incorporated in the 19th century beam of the Museum.

The West Pavilion

The West Pavilion displays a selection of artefacts documenting the life of the city and its territory from the Classical period to the Roman-Republican period. Among the copious mass of archaeological documentation are some lead tesserae engraved with the names of citizens found inside the temple of Athena, veritable “identity cards” from the past.