| Tindari | ||
 | ||
| State | Italy | |
|---|---|---|
| Region | Sicily | |
| Territory | Messinese | |
| Altitude | 268 m a.s.l. | |
| Inhabitants | 33 (2001) | |
| Name inhabitants | tindaridi, tindaroti, tindaritani | |
| Prefix tel | 39 0941 | |
| POSTAL CODE | 98066 | |
| Time zone | UTC 1 | |
| Patron | Holy Mary of Tindari | |
Position
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Tindari is a fraction of Patti, in Messinese.
To know
Geographical notes
Tindari is located on a coastal promontory that juts out, from a height of 268 m, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Oriented Natural Reserve of the Marinello lakes. The reserve at the foot of the promontory is connected to the sacred area and the archaeological park by the path called Coda di Volpe.
Background
The city (in ancient Greek: Τύνδαρις, Týndaris) was founded by Dionysius I of Syracuse in 396 BC as a colony of Syracusan mercenaries who had participated in the war against Carthage, in the territory of the Sicilian city of Abacaenum (Tripi), and took the name of Tyndaris, in honor of Tindaro, king of Sparta and husband of Leda, putative father of Elena and the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux.
During the First Punic War, under the control of Gerone II of Syracuse, it was a Carthaginian naval base, and fought in its waters in 257 BC. the battle of Tindari, in which the Roman fleet, led by consul Aulus Atilio Calatino, put the Carthaginian one to flight.
With Syracuse it later passed into the Roman orbit and was the naval base of Sesto Pompeo. Taken by Augustus in 36 BC, who deduced the Roman colony of Colonia Augusta Tyndaritanorum, one of the five in Sicily, Cicero cited it as nobilissima civitas.
In the first century A.D. it suffered the consequences of a large landslide, while in the fourth century it was subjected to two destructive earthquakes.
Episcopal seat, it was conquered by the Byzantines in 535 and fell in 836, into the hands of the Arabs from whom it was destroyed.
There remained the sanctuary dedicated to the Black Madonna of Tindari, progressively enlarged, which houses a Mary with the Child carved in wood, considered a bearer of grace and miraculous.
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Tindari: full screen map.How to get
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What see
- Sanctuary of the Madonna del Tindari (Papal minor basilica). The Sanctuary of Tindari, which became a minor papal basilica on 8 September 2018, is located at the eastern end of the promontory, overlooking the sea, at the ancient acropolis, where a small church was built on the remains of the abandoned city. The devotion to "Matri 'u Tinnaru" is undoubtedly among the oldest Marian devotions in Sicily, widespread and celebrated practically all over the island. The statue of the Black Madonna, carved in cedar wood, is from an unspecified period, perhaps it came here fromEgypt following the phenomenon of iconoclasm, in the VIII-IX century. The Madonna, a Theotókos Odigitria seated in the position of Basilissa ("Queen enthroned"), holds the Child Jesus in her arms, has a crown on her head, and presents the unmistakable characteristic of a long face - this is especially noticeable in the large proportions of the nose , but also from the conformation of the lower part of the face strangely elongated downwards while maintaining graceful and very harmonious proportions even from an artistic point of view. The long face is also present in other oriental and African representations, but rare among religious statues in the West. At the base of the statue, the inscription that takes up the Song of Songs 1,5 and 1,6 Nigra sum sed formosa, which can be translated as "I am brunette but beautiful". The sanctuary has a troubled history. In July 1544 the assault of the Turkish-Ottoman corsair army led by Admiral Khayr al-Din Barbarossa threatened the Sicilian Tyrrhenian coast: it set fire to the Cathedral of San Bartolomeo in Lipari, besieges the town protected by the castle of Santa Lucia del Mela, threatens the fortified citadel of Milazzo, devastates the church which is rebuilt between 1552 and 1598. The bishop Giovanni Previtera founds the sanctuary of Tindari. He built and financed the cathedral with the annexed buildings, whose works were completed after his death thanks to the donations of the Previtera family to the diocese of Patti. The sanctuary was enlarged by Bishop Giuseppe Pullano with the construction of a new larger church consecrated in 1979. Like the Porziuncola di San Francesco in Santa Maria degli Angeli ad Assisi, or the sanctuary of the Holy House of the Madonna incorporated in the basilica-fortress of Loreto, in the same way inside the walls of the buildings that surround the sanctuary of Tindari, in the external part close to the presbytery, there is the original church of the Black Madonna, thus forming a sort of church within the church, accessible only in certain times of the year and at certain times of the day. On the choir in the counter façade, there is the large pipe organ, built by Giuseppe Ruffatti in 1978, with 78 stops on five manuals and pedal. The feast of the sanctuary and of the Madonna del Tindari takes place every year between 7 and 8 September, on the occasion of the liturgical feast of the Nativity of the Virgin.
- Archaeological remains. The remains of the ancient city are found in the archaeological area, in a fairly good state of conservation, due to the lack of interest in a reuse of the sandstone blocks of which they were made. The first excavations date back to 1838-1839 and were resumed between 1960 and 1964 by the Archaeological Superintendence of Syracuse and again in 1993, 1996 and 1998 by the Superintendency of Messina, section of the archaeological heritage. Mosaics, sculptures and ceramics have been found, partly preserved at the local museum and partly at the Regional Archaeological Museum of Palermo. The urban layout, probably dating back to the time of the founding of the city, had a regular checkerboard layout. It was divided into three decumani, main roads (width of 8 m), ran in a south-east - north-west direction, each at a different altitude, and crossed at right angles and at regular distances with the hinges, secondary and sloping roads (width 3 m). Under the hinges ran the sewer system of the city, to which the pipes coming from the individual houses were connected. The blocks delimited by the streets had a width of about 30 m and a length of 77 or 78 m. One of the decumans found in the excavation, the upper one must have been the main street of the city: at one end it runs alongside the theater, located further upstream and dug into the slopes of the hill, and at the other end it flows into the agora, beyond which, in the highest area, now occupied by the Sanctuary of the Black Madonna, there must have been the acropolis.
- The surrounding walls. The city walls, whose currently visible remains are due to a reconstruction of the third century BC. which traces a previous wall, probably coeval to the foundation, was completed on the side facing the sea and remodeled in the late imperial and Byzantine era. The enclosure developed for a length of about 3 km and was of the "double curtain" type, with two parallel walls (about 0.70 m thick) in square sandstone with an isodomic arrangement, separated by a space, originally filled with earth or stones (2.10 m thick), reaching a height of 6.85 m. At unequal distances square towers rose: one of these (internal space of 6.5 x 5.15 m with walls 0 , 43 m and 0.87 m long) retains a section of the staircase that led to the top of the walls. The main gate, on the south-western side, was flanked by two towers and protected by a semicircular pincer anti-door, with the internal area paved with pebbles Other small passages opened alongside the towers of the main gate and were used for the sorties of the defenders.
- Greek theatre. The theater was built in Greek forms at the end of the 4th century BC. and later remodeled in Roman times, with a new decoration and adaptation as a venue for the games of the Amphitheater. Remained for a long time in abandonment and known only for 19th century illustrations, it leaned against the natural hollow conformation of the hill, in which the tiers of the seats (0.40 m high and 0.70 m deep) of the auditorium were dug, which had to reach a capacity of about 3000 seats. In Roman times, a brick portico was added and the reconstruction of the scene, of which only the foundations and an arch remain, restored in 1939. The orchestra was transformed into an arena, surrounding the auditorium with a wall and suppressing it the four lower steps. Since 1956 there has been an art festival that includes dance, music and obviously theater among its events.
- Roman block. In the urban area, a complete block (insula IV) was excavated between 1949 and 1964, delimited by the sections of the two excavated decumani and by two secondary roads. Due to the slope of the land, the different buildings that compose it were built on terraces at different levels. On the lower decumanus there were six tabernae, or rooms for trade, three of which were equipped with a back shop. On these rested a large domus (house B) with a peristyle with twelve stone columns with Doric capitals. The tablinium, or hall (length 8 m and width 4.60 m). At the highest level a second domus, "house C", with a peristyle similar to the previous one, presents the access to the tablinium framed by columns with Italic Corinthian capitals in terracotta and bases made with round bricks. The two houses were built in the 1st century BC, on previous housing phases and were subjected to restorations and alterations: in particular, in the upper part, small baths and the original scutulated floors (scutulated with the insertion of small colored marble slabs) signino with insertion of white mosaic tiles, or even with polychrome mosaics, mosaics in black and white were replaced with figures.
- Basilica. The so-called "Basilica", in the past also identified with a gymnasium, is a propylaum of access to the agora, located at the point where the decumanus maximus enters, the main street of the city. It is a two-storey building, dated to the 4th century, built in square sandstone which has a large central passage with a barrel vault divided by nine arches. On the sides, other arches climb over secondary entrances.
- Marinello. At the base of the promontory there is a sandy area with a series of small bodies of water, whose conformation changes following the movements of the sand, pushed by the storm surges. The beach is known by the name of Marinello or the dry sea and several legends are linked to it. According to one of them, the beach was miraculously formed following the fall of a child from the terrace of the sanctuary, then found safe and sound on the beach just created for the withdrawal of the sea. The child's mother, a pilgrim who came from afar, following the miracle, would have changed her mind about the true miraculous nature of the sculpture, which she had doubted because of the Virgin's dark complexion. Another legend tells of the death of Pope Eusebius on this beach on August 17, 310, a few months after his election, which took place on April 18, and would have been exiled to Sicily by Maxentius. Above the beach, on the ridge, there is also a cave, which according to a local legend was inhabited by a sorceress, who was dedicated to attracting sailors with her song and then devouring them. When some of the enticed gave up due to the difficulty of reaching the entrance to the cave, the sorceress vented her anger by sinking her fingers into the wall: this was the reason for the small holes that open numerous in the rock.
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Itineraries
The path Foxtail (local dialect "cuda vuppi" or "â cuda â vuppi"), with its route it connects the Oriented Nature Reserve of the Marinello Lakes and the entire port area of Oliveri to the ancient city of Tindarys, a stretch that was subsequently used as pilgrimage route to the Marian shrine; the particular altimetric conformation with intermediate saddle recalls the typical development of the caudal extremity of the fox, hence the etymology.
The path that at times crosses or delimits areas cultivated with olive groves, is characterized by Mediterranean scrub, offers spectacular landscapes of the Gulf of Patti, enchanting views of the Aeolian Islands, a breathtaking view of the Peloritani chain and the Milazzo peninsula, sweeps over the area port of Oliveri and offers a unique scenario of the Marinello lagoon system.
The route starts in the valley in the Marinello accommodation area, passing through the underpass the historic route of the Messina-Palermo, the carriageways of the A20 motorway on the west side near the service areas, the signs on the left indicate the beginning of the itinerary entirely detached and partly paved in the first section. In about two hours, after two slight ups and downs, reaching the altitude of 283 meters, you reach the service areas located on the precipice behind the entire complex used as a sanctuary, end of the path upstream.
