Two-day excursion to ancient Messina

On 17 and 18 April 2019, the Erasmus + team of the 1o Gymnasio Acharnon held a two-day excursion to Ancient Messina and Kalamata as part of the program's diffusion. The school took part in the ancient drama festival in Messina, where schools from different parts of Greece and abroad participated. The spectators met the problems of the refugees through the theater.

The students traveled to the archaeological site for three whole hours on the first day because the space was huge and the guided tour was made by the children themselves. The theater, the ancient market, the Arsinoe fountain, the Mausoleum, the stadium, the ecclesiastical gallery, etc. were fought in the palaestra, they ran into the stadium and presented an excerpt from "Modern Lysistrata" in the ancient theater of Messina with a crowd audience.

The following dialogue concerned the war and its results. We referred to the Messinian wars that Sparta carried out against the Messinians, resulting in death, destruction, the creation of slaves, refugees and immigrants. We talked about the tragic phenomenon of refugee in the ancient but also in today's era.

The next day we watched Medea in the ancient theater, visited the rest of the archaeological site, the Messini Museum and then we traveled to Kalamata, where we did sightseeing.

Finally, in the context of evaluating our activities, students and teachers filled out a crossword puzzle about what they saw in the field and what they saw or discussed about refugees.