Above Syracuse the land rises in a long limestone terrace, a triangle of high ground pointing inland, and the ancient Greeks called it Epipolae, the place above the city. Whoever held it held Syracuse. During the great Athenian expedition against the city, between 415 and 413 BC, the fight for this plateau decided the war: the Athenians tried to wall Syracuse in from here, the Syracusans and their Spartan allies built counter-walls, and in the end the Athenian army was destroyed, with thousands of prisoners left to die in the stone quarries below. A few years later the tyrant Dionysius I enclosed the entire plateau with walls many kilometres long, and at its western tip he built the Castello Eurialo, one of the most complete Greek fortresses anywhere.
The Euryalus fort is the place to stop. It has moats cut into the bedrock, towers and a maze of underground passages that let defenders move unseen, and from the top you can look east over the modern sprawl of Syracuse to the sea and the island of Ortigia, the old heart of the city. On a clear day Etna appears to the north. The surrounding land is a patchwork of dry-stone walls, olive and carob trees and wild fennel, and in spring the plateau is full of flowers.
Riding out of Syracuse, this is the first climb, and it leads to excellent things. The SS124 heads west into the Hyblaean Mountains, a limestone upland cut by deep gorges, towards Palazzolo Acreide with its baroque churches and Greek theatre, and beyond to the rock-cut tombs of Pantalica. The roads are often narrow and twisty, with rough patches, walls right at the edge of the lane and very little traffic. South, the baroque towns of the Val di Noto, Noto, Modica and Scicli, rebuilt after the earthquake of 1693, make a wonderful loop, and Scicli will be familiar to anyone who has watched the Montalbano television series.
Belvedere, the suburb that sits right on the plateau, has fuel, bars and shops, and Syracuse below has everything. Spend the evening in Ortigia, with its Greek temple of Apollo, the spring of Arethusa full of papyrus, and seafood by the water. In the morning, an almond granita with a brioche is the proper Sicilian breakfast before the heat of the day.