Crotone

We arrived in the beautiful little port of Crotone on Italy’s eastern coast this morning. This charming town was the home of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras. There must be something in the water here that produces great mathematicians. The town’s modern claim to fame is that it is the gateway to a large natural area of Italy, something like a national park.

We are only the second cruise ship to arrive here in recent months, so the town rolled out the red carpet for us. Schools remained closed for an extra day (Easter Monday is a civil holiday here) so that Italian students of English could operate hospitality tents and thereby practice their language skills. They gave us free samples of the products of Calabria—delicious orange juice, sticky pastries and other delights. Other students were posted at the gate of the local castle. My heart melted as one precious high school girl gave us the history of “King Charles the FIVE-th, the king of Ess-Spain” who used to rule here. As she struggled with English, my heart cursed the Anglo-Saxons for producing such a barbaric language. Citizens took the day off to serve as re-enactors of Pythagoras, the Greek goddess Hera or medieval residents of their town.

We took time for a thorough investigation of the local archaeological museum. There was a long line of my shipmates waiting to purchase tickets, but after a few minutes the ticket-taker just raised the barrier and waved us in free of charge. Although the exhibits’ descriptions are in Italian, I was able to get the gist of most of them. I learned that there is evidence of human habitation here going back to around 6000 years BC, though documented settlement began with the Phoenicians. Crotone was part of Magna Graecia and participated fully in Greece’s Olypiads and in her wars. Among the photos I took were pictures of an utterly beautiful Greek urn, and an incomparable diadem found at the nearby excavation of the Roman Temple of Hera Lacinia. I was surprised that the little museum here really is quite good.

Crotone’s most notable Greek son was the philosopher-mathematician Pythagoras, who contended that all of reality could be explained using numbers. He also came up with the notion of reincarnation several centuries before Gautama Buddha was born. I am not aware of any connection between the two thinkers, but it’s hard not to wonder whether Pythagorean ideas about the afterlife ever made it to the east as far as India.

For the first time in a foreign city I used Apple Maps to direct us, today to the the Museum of Pythagoras. The app worked perfectly. At the end of a fascinating thirty-minute walk through the new part of downtown, we found lovely Pythagoras Park overlooking the city. Some of the children’s playground equipment incorporated cubes, triangles or hexagons in silent tribute to Pythagoras. We finally found the museum itself, which charges an admission fee of five euros per person. The two lower floors display modern art from the region with no clear connection to the Greek mathematician. The top floor, however, displays a few exhibits and long line of wall posters giving the history of mathematics, highlighting not only Pythagoras, but also thinkers such as Newton, Paschal, Leibniz and Euler. While we are daily walkers who didn’t mind the half-hour jaunt just to see what the museum offers, I doubt that the trip would be worthwhile for most visitors.

So now we are back in a comfortable stateroom waiting for the ship to delight us with an Italian feast tonight. While the service Viking provides is impeccable, and we’re grateful for it, I must say that the overwhelming hospitality of all of the citizens of Crotone today won our hearts.Read more