Now here is a good pub quiz question, what nationality was Archimedes? The answer of course is he was a Sicilian (Sicily was not part of Italy then). He was born in Syracuse in 287 BC and it is known that he visited Eygpt but there is no record of him ever visiting what we now call Greece.
We went round two exhibitions today which describe his inventions (not much is known about his life) one was poor, the other quite good. As well as being a bit of a mathematical genius he also designed and built warfare machines including a parabolic mirror with which to set attacking ships on fire and some sort of spring loaded hook which could upturn ships if they came close to the harbour walls.
Both of these were used successfully against the Romans when they attacked Syracuse.
The rest of the day was spent wandering round the streets of the old town admiring the buildings and queuing up for sandwiches! There is a Syracuse "Happy Bap" which is highly recommended, it was easy to find as there was a long queue outside. The "Whitty" pictured at the top of the page, chats away whilst he creates his masterpieces which take so long they actually give out bits of mozzarella to patrons waiting in the queue to keep them interested. After 20 minutes waiting and calculating it would be almost an hour before we got to be served we jumped ship and bought our own ingredients from a deli next door and had a nice lunch on our roof top patio.