Fountain of Arethusa

Listen first. Below the stone railing, water slips quietly over a shallow pool. A few metres away, the open sea breaks against the seawall. Fresh water and salt water sit side by side here, almost close enough to touch. Tall green stalks of papyrus rise from the pool, their feathery heads moving in the breeze. Ducks paddle between them. Fish turn slowly in the clear water. You are standing on the western edge of Ortigia, the small island that forms the oldest heart of Syracuse.

This is the Fountain of Arethusa. It is a natural spring, and that is the first surprise. Fresh water rises from the ground at the very edge of the Mediterranean. Rain falls on the limestone hills inland, soaks deep into the rock, and travels underground through cracks and channels. Here, it finds a way back to the surface. For the people who first settled this island, a reliable source of fresh water beside a sheltered harbour was worth more than gold.

Those settlers were Greeks from Corinth, a powerful city in mainland Greece. According to ancient tradition, they arrived in the eighth century before Christ. They chose Ortigia because it was easy to defend, and because of this spring. From that small beginning, Syracuse grew into one of the largest and richest cities of the Greek world. For a time, it was a rival even to Athens.

But the Greeks did not see this spring as simple geology. They told a story about it. The story is myth, not history, and it is one of the oldest stories connected to this city. It begins far away, in the Peloponnese, the large peninsula of southern Greece. There lived a nymph called Arethusa. A nymph, in Greek myth, is a female spirit of nature, often linked to a river, a tree, or a spring.

One day, the legend says, Arethusa was bathing in a river. The river belonged to a god called Alpheus. He saw her and fell in love, and he chased her across the countryside. Arethusa ran until she had no strength left. She called out to Artemis, the goddess of the hunt and protector of young women. Artemis wrapped her in a cloud and turned her into water.

As a spring, Arethusa sank into the earth. She travelled under the sea, all the way from Greece to Sicily, and rose again here, on Ortigia. But the story does not end there. Alpheus did not give up. He too, the legend says, flowed beneath the sea, and his waters joined hers in this pool. The Roman poet Ovid tells a version of this story in his long poem of transformations, the Metamorphoses.

The ancient Syracusans were proud of their nymph. And here is a detail many visitors miss. Arethusa's face appeared on the city's silver coins for centuries. On the finest examples, her head is surrounded by leaping dolphins, a reminder of the sea around her spring. Many collectors and historians consider these coins among the most beautiful ever made in the ancient world. If you visit the archaeological museum in Syracuse, look for them there.

The spring also impressed the Romans, who later took control of Sicily. The Roman orator Cicero described a spring on this island of remarkable size, full of fish, protected from the sea by a wall of stone. More than two thousand years later, the description still fits. Look down into the water now. The fish are still here, and so is the stone wall between the pool and the waves.

Now look at the shape of the fountain itself. The semicircular basin, the stone steps, and the railing above are much more recent. The spring was reshaped into this form in the nineteenth century, when the city was rebuilding its waterfront. The pale local limestone has weathered to a warm honey colour. In the afternoon sun, it glows against the deep green of the papyrus.

And that papyrus is the second surprise. This is the plant that ancient Egyptians used to make paper. It is very rare to see it growing in Europe at all. Near Syracuse, it also grows along the Ciane river, south of the city. How it arrived is not certain. One popular story says it was a gift from an Egyptian king to a ruler of Syracuse in ancient times. Others believe it came with Arab traders in the Middle Ages. Nobody knows for sure.

The fountain also appears in more recent history. In the summer of 1798, a British fleet under Admiral Horatio Nelson stopped at Syracuse to take on water and supplies. Soon afterwards, Nelson found the French fleet in Egypt and defeated it at the Battle of the Nile. Local tradition likes to say that his ships drew their water from Arethusa. It is a good story, and Syracuse tells it often, though you should treat the detail as tradition.

Take a moment to look around you. Behind the fountain, the old buildings of Ortigia line the waterfront. To the west, the wide curve of the Great Harbour opens out, with boats at anchor and the mainland beyond. A tree-lined promenade runs along the water below. In the evening, families walk here, children lean over the railing to point at the ducks, and the light over the harbour turns soft and gold.

Before you leave, stand at the railing one more time. Notice the sound of the water, the papyrus moving in the wind, the salt in the air. A spring, a myth, a harbour, and a city have shared this small corner of rock for close to three thousand years. As you walk on into the narrow streets of Ortigia, remember that fresh water is still rising quietly beside the sea, just as it did when the first ships arrived.