SiracusaLentini.
This is the ancient Leontìnoi, traditionally said to be the home of the Laestrygones, man-eating giants encountered by Ulysses (Odyssey, Bk X). It was founded in 729 BC by the Greeks of Naxos on San Mauro Hill, near the modem town, in a territory already in- habited by the Sicels. After some two centuries of independence and prosperity it was subjected to Gela at the beginning of the 5th c. BC and soon afterwards by Syracuse which, except for brief periods of autonomy, dominated it until the death of Hieron II in 215 BC. The following year it was taken and destroyed by the Roman consul Marcellus. It became a bishopric in the early Christian and Byzantine age. Seriously damaged by earthquakes in 1140 and 1169 and rebuilt during the Swabian period, it was one of the main royal cities in the island. But the earthquake in 1542 (the citizens refused to move to the new town of Carlentini) and even more so the one in 1693 inevitably led to a process of gradual decline. It was only in the 19th c. that Lentini began to develop economically, with new expansion of the town.

The centre of the town consists of Piazza Umberto I and Piazza Duomo, where the Chiesa Madre, Sant'Alfio, stands. The church was built at the end of the 17th c. and a1tered in the 18th. With a nave and two aisles, it contains the silver litter of St Alfio and a Byzantine icon, the Virgin Odigitria. The Archaeological Museum, in Piazza degli Studi, displays interesting local material from prehistory to the 2nd c. BC.