1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Palazzolo Acreide

PALAZZOLO ACREIDE, a town of Sicily, in the province of Syracuse, 28 m. by road W. of it, 2285 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901), 14,840. The town occupies the site of the ancient Acrae, founded by Syracuse about 664 B.C. It followed in the main the fortunes of the mother city. In the treaty between the Romans and Hiero II. in 263 B.C. it was assigned to the latter.

The ancient city lay on the hill above the modern town, the approach to it being defended by quarries, in which tombs of all periods have been discovered. The auditorium of the small theatre is well preserved, though nothing of the stage remains. Close to it are ruins of other buildings, which bear, without justification, the names Naumachia, Odeum (perhaps a bath establishment) and Palace of Hiero. The water supply was obtained by subterranean aqueducts. In the cliffs of the Monte Pineta to the south are other tomb chambers, and to the south again are the curious bas-reliefs called Santoni or Santicelli, mutilated in the 19th century by a peasant proprietor, which appear to be sepulchral also. Near here too is the necropolis of the Acrocoro della Torre, where many sarcophagi have been found. Five miles north lies Buscemi, near which a sacred grotto has been discovered; and also a church cut in the rock and surrounded by a cemetery.^[1]

See G. Judica, Antichità di Acre (Messina, 1819). (Baron Judica's collection of antiquities was dispersed after his death.) J. Schubring, Jahrbuch für Philologie, Suppl. IV., 662–672.

1. P. Orsi in Notizie degli Scavi (1899), 452–471; Römische Quartalschrift (1898), 624–631.