It may be hard to imagine, these days, that Sicily was once the cradle of European civilisation. Three super-powers battled for supremacy and Sicily was the centre of it all. Today, I’ll tell you about the Phoenicians, the earliest super-power and Sicily’s first colonists. Carthaginians and Phoenicians: the first empire The Phoenicians were the first…
Category: Sightseeing all Sicily
Things to see and do in Sicily
Baths and Curses in Palermo’s Archaeological Museum
I recently visited Palermo’s Archaeological Museum (called “Antonino Salinas”). Most of it is closed for restoration, but there was still plenty to enjoy. I sat for ten minutes serenely enjoying the sound of the fountain before exploring the part of the museum still open. Can you guess what this is? It’s a Roman…
Where to go in Sicily: West Coast itinerary
Follow the link for a stunning itinerary suggested by inspired Palermo native, Oriana: Where to go in Sicily: West Coast itinerary.
Loafing around in Sicily’s Gingerbread Village
The people of San Biagio Platani, a village in the Agrigento province of south-western Sicily, have celebrated Easter every year since the 1700’s by decorating their streets with arches and towers made of bread. The entire community spends three months turning the place into a gingerbread village… yet Hansel and Gretel never come! For…
A Rough Start for the Rough Guide to Sicily
So, what’s it like to earn your living by going on holiday? Jules Brown, author of The Rough Guide to Sicily, describes his very first hilarious trip to Sicily especially for my blog. He has written stacks of travel guides, but Sicily was his first and, he says, still his favourite – despite how…
The Rich Man in his Villa Ramacca and the Poor Man at his Gate
This is an 18th century villa near my home. It can be hired for weddings and other special events. I walked around it recently, as it hosted the exhibition about Sicilian Sulphur mines I blogged about. Whilst the sulphur miners in Sicily were living in slavery and abject poverty, the barons who owned the…
Is Sicily the Most Geological Place on Earth?
I took my son to a special exhibition of minerals owned by a private collector recently. He said this one looked just like Superman’s home, so it must be kryptonite: I was inclined to agree, but actually the label said it’s a kind of quartz. Sicily has a stunningly amazing range of mineral deposits. It…
Where is the City of Zyz, and why was it Cut in Four pieces?
Palermo was founded by the Phoenicians from Tunisia and called Zyz. They divided the city into quarters, with one long road running south from the sea right through the heart of the city, and another running across it. These roads divided the city into four quarters or cantieri. The place where they intersect is still…
The Moorish Heads of Sicily
…Otherwise known as Pot Heads! I like the ambiguity in the phrase Moorish Heads. When the Moors invaded Sicily from North Africa in the 11th century, they built ceramics workshops all over the island and taught the Sicilians to make brightly coloured majolica, an art form which gradually spread throughout Sicily. One of the excavated…
What do Wine, Salt and an English Martyr have in common?
Marsala, on the westernmost point of Sicily! Marsala, being a major strategic town on Sicily’s west coast, became a major base when the Spanish conquered Italy. It has a very southern-Spanish feel. The houses have exciting balconies that reminded me of the beautiful ones you see in Seville. Marsala Cathedral is dedicated to Saint Thomas a…
How can Art bring the Dead back to Life?
We went to the southern Sicilian town of Favara a while back. The historic town centre looked like a slum in Chad, or perhaps the most bombed-out district of Damascus. There were wooden boards and scaffolding around the derelict houses, to make sure pieces of masonry didn’t land on the cars. There were hoardings to keep…
Chivalrous Knights and Cloaked Assassins: Italy’s Five Martial Arts
When you say “Martial Arts,” most people think of Karate chops, Judo throws and the other unarmed combat techniques of the Far East. Yet it’s actually Italy and Greece which have the oldest martial arts traditions in the world. All they need is someone as cool as Bruce Lee to make them world famous! Here’s my…
The Botanical Gardens of Palermo
Palermo has a 200-year-old botanical garden with a vast and stunning plant collection and a crazily cheap entrance fee. Obviously there are different flowers to see each month: this is the garden in August. These photos are all by my super-talented sister Susanna. Click on any photo to see a high resolution enlargement. Have you voted…
A Dozen Safety Tips for a Holiday in Sicily
I have read articles in the UK travel press by journalists who, overwhelmed by their own intrepidity, actually visited Sicily and came back alive! They described their holidays as if they had toured Palestine with an Israeli flag draped over their backpack. You are 27 times more likely to get murdered in America than in…
The Vucciria by Renato Guttuso
This painting is called “The Vucciria” and is by Renato Guttuso. The original – which is absolutely huge – hangs in Palazzo Steri in Palermo – at various times the former seat of the Spanish Inquisition, palace, Moorish pottery factory, community food storage warehouse, government office and prison. It was painted in 1974 and Palermo University had…
Single Woman in Italy? The Sicilian Housewife’s Guide to Italian Men
I spent years travelling alone among the men of Italy. I wish I had known all these insider tips, which I’ve now learnt from my own Italian Hubby! Boundaries Italian men will do things that overstep “boundaries” in your culture. Their boundaries are different. One thing they will do, relentlessly, is chat you up in…
Top Ten places to visit in North-Western Sicily
Sicily’s north-western region is rich in exciting and varied places to visit. There are countless wonders, but here’s my TOP TEN. 1. MONREALE CATHEDRAL Monreale cathedral was commissioned by the Normans but mainly designed and built by the Africans, whom the Normans had just conquered. The Muslim-Arabic influence shows everywhere in this cathedral, which is…
Naughty pictures on the ceiling! The Cappella Palatina in Palermo’s Norman Palace
To find out about the Palatine Chapel in Palermo’s Norman Palace – and to learn why it has pictures of nude belly dancers on the ceiling – see my previous post, reblogged from a great blog about Sicilian history called Siquillya. These are some more colour pictures of the ceiling. My favourite image is the…
The Cappella Palatina muqarnas
Originally posted on siquillya:
EDIT: I’ve made some scans and have adjusted the images as best as possible. Wish I could have copied these in glorious color, but sometimes you have to work with what you can get. On Thursday, I braved the holiday tourist crowds and took the train from Trenton to New York…
How the Africans brought Plumbing to Sicily: The Cefalù Laundry
The African immigrant crisis continues in Sicily and Lampedusa. At its peak the island of Lampedusa, which usually has 2,000 inhabitants and a plumbing infrastructure to fit, was also home to 5,000 refugees from Libya. The plumbing could not cope and people had no alternative but to use the beaches as toilets. The Lampedusan economy depends…
A Nativity Play that Fills a Town
I think Sicily produces the only nativity play in the world which features live belly dancers. It happens in the town of Termini Imerese, on Sicily’s north coast, which produces a nativity play each year which fills the entire town. The historic town centre is closed off and becomes the stage for a dramatic production…
Celebrate being Italian with a Night at the Opera
To celebrate Sicily becoming part of Italy, Palermo Council announced a competition in 1864 to design a new opera house for Palermo. An opera house! Can you think of a better way to celebrate being Italian? The winning design was by Italian architect Giovan Battista Filippo Basile. At the time, it was the largest…
Fancy some nuts?
I photographed these traditional Sicilian market stalls during the village festival this summer. They sell all kinds of nuts, and a few typical sweets as well. The vendors travel around Sicily from village festival to village festival – there’s always one going on somewhere – livening the streets up and selling their healthy snacks. The…
Saint Benedict: Black Celebrity Healer, Chef and possibly Lion Tamer
Saint Benedict, known as Benedetto il Moro or Benedict the Moor, was born to two black African slaves in Messina, Sicily in 1524. He was also variously called niger, which means black, and ethiops, which means Sub-Saharan African. If I know the Sicilians, they probably called him “Chinese” half the time, too – they’re pretty vague…
How to cook the dinner, Roman style: Tindari Archaeological Site
I saw this rare object in the little museum in the archaeological site at Tindari. It’s a Roman hob. All you have to do is pop some wood into the cavity under the pot, and light it. You can regulate the flame by raking some wood forward, or adding more fuel. You can also lower…
Fancy walking into the richest bank vault in the world?
You actually can. In Sicily. It is called the “Medagliere” and it occupies the basement of the Archaeological Museum of Siracusa, on the island’s south-eastern tip. You get an adrenaline rush just walking through the door. It is solid metal about four feet thick, with iron bars that poke out in all directions and penetrate…
Siracusa, The Ancient Greek jewel in Sicily’s Crown
We had a holiday in Siracusa this summer, over on the south eastern corner of the island. That side of Sicily has a lot of Baroque architecture. Sicilian baroque is a distinctive style developed under Spanish and Bourbon rule (17th century). Here’s Siracusa cathedral: The Museum of Archaeology in Siracusa is wonderful. Since my degree…
Dear EU tax payer, how does the Renato Guttuso Museum spend YOUR money?
British Prime Minister David Cameron was on TV recently, telling the EU they cannot have the extra 1.7 billion pounds they are asking Britain to donate by 1st December this year. Whilst he didn’t exactly give them the hand-bagging Margaret Thatcher would have, he did seem very cheesed off indeed. Nigel Farage of the UK…
Solunto – One of the world’s first multicultural cities?
Ah, my legs hurt! What a long uphill hike that was! Solunto was a city close to Santa Flavia, on the north-western coast of Sicily. It was founded by Carthaginians (from the city that is now called Tunis) when they colonised Sicily in the 11th century B.C. That was an awfully long time ago to…
The Sicilian fishing village of St. Elia
St. Elia is a small fishing village on the north coast of Sicily, a short drive from my home. Their fishing boats, made entirely of wood, are blue, white and orange. Each village along this coast paints its boats a specific color scheme. The fishermen sometimes row silently, but sometimes plonk outboard motors on the…
Archimedes and his Terrible Stomach Ache
This puzzle, at least 2.5 thousand years old, is called a Stomachion, which means “stomach ache”. It comes to us thanks to Archimedes, Sicily’s greatest scientist and one of the greatest mathematicians in the world. He described it in a book now called The Archimedes Palimpsest and used it to inspire some of his great mathematical…
The Dangerously Truthful Diary of a Sicilian Housewife 