Ortigia is not just an island containing the most ancient part of Siracusa: it is said to represent a quail.
Its name in fact may derive from Ancient Greek language, because its founders saw in that square kilometer of land the profile of an ortix, meaning quail. There is another hypothesis, again of animal nature, concerning the name of the island connected to mainland by three bridges – Calafatari, Santa Lucia, and the central bridge Umberto I, also called Umbertino –: Ortigia may derive from coturnice, a bird belonging to the same family as quails which still now lives both in Greece and Sicily.
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