Portico of the Athlete
Detail
Catania’s archaeological landscape has been enriched with a new gem to admire: the “Portico of the Athlete” – an underground site discovered in the 1990s beneath the road surface of Via Crociferi and opened to the public in February 2026, following extensive research and restoration work carried out by the University of Catania in collaboration with the Archaeological Park of Catania and the Aci Valley.
The Athlete’s Portico is accessed via a small door located beneath the Alessi staircase. From here, one enters two mysterious rooms, believed to date from the Roman era, featuring a covered, underground corridor decorated with niches and exedras, and a mosaic walkway, part of a monumental building from the 1st century AD. The rooms, shrouded in a magical twilight, house the extraordinary Statue of the Athlete: the marble torso that gives the site its name, depicting a young athlete.
The Portico dell’Atleta can also be experienced through a virtual reconstruction, which gives even non-specialists an idea of the original work’s completeness, accompanied by a narrator’s voice recounting the layers of Greek and Roman Catania.
The site is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3 pm to 6 pm (maximum 10 visitors per session, duration 15–20 minutes), with booking required via email to the Archaeological Park’s Public Relations Office: urp.parco.archeo.catania@regione.sicilia.it
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