Syracuse

Syracuse needs 2 days: touring the Neapolis Archaeological Park, with the 5th-century BC Greek Theater where Aeschylus's plays premiered during his own lifetime, on one, and cruising around Ortigia, the historic island where the city was born, on the other. April-June and September-October bring the mildest weather. It's inexpensive for Sicily. For centuries it was the largest and most powerful Greek city in the West, a rival to Athens itself and birthplace of the mathematician Archimedes, and its Fountain of Arethusa, a freshwater spring meters from the sea on Ortigia, has been cited since antiquity as one of Sicily's most curious natural phenomena.