In 1899 Paolo Orsi dug beneath the base and took apart an assumption a century old: this was not a war trophy. Under the column, cut into the rock, lay a square hypogeum plastered in red and white, with two warriors laid out inside; one held a bronze from the age of Hiero II, and that single detail moved the dating of the monument from the 5th to the 3rd century BC. The Colonna Pizzuta is therefore the marker of an important tomb, planted on the outskirts of ancient Heloros, in the Ficopala district.
What to see
The shaft is 3.90 metres across and rises 10.50 metres on a base of four steps: squat, almost tower-like proportions, explained by its job as a signal visible from the sea and from the road to Syracuse. The name comes from the Sicilian pizzuta, pointed: the top ended in a spike before the earthquake of 1693 lopped it off.
A marble plaque of 1795 is fixed to the shaft, recording the repairs ordered by Ferdinand III of Sicily. The monument had come out of oblivion only a few decades earlier: the French painter Jean-Pierre Houël sketched it during his Sicilian journey, and those drawings are the first record we have. Before Orsi, scholars argued over whether it had been raised after the defeat of Hippocrates of Gela by Syracuse or to celebrate the victory over the Athenians of Demosthenes and Nicias, wiped out in 413 BC along the river Assinaros, a short way from here.
Visiting
We are about ten kilometres from Noto, on the road running down to the sea and the mouth of the Tellaro. The column stands in the open, alone among the fields, and you pick it out from far off; there are no tickets and no opening hours, and twenty minutes are enough to walk around it and read the plaque. The archaeological area of Heloros, on the hill above the Ionian a little further south - walls of the 6th century BC, a theatre, a sanctuary of Demeter and Kore -, has long been shut for lack of custodians, so ask locally before counting on it. Wear closed shoes: in summer the tall grass hides the stones.
Our editors' tip
We go in late afternoon, when the raking light picks out the joints between the blocks and the column throws a very long shadow across the field. Then we walk down to the beach at Eloro: ten minutes, and it becomes clear why the Syracusans put their first colony here. If you have time, pair it with Vendicari, which begins just beyond.