One day strolling through Palermo – OK, staggering in the heat – I chanced to notice a pair of gates which felt very familiar. I had never seen them before, yet I knew them so well. I knew there was going to be a false river inside them inhabited by expensive imported ducks. So we…
Tag: Palermo province
Sicily’s marvellous mechanical dining table in the Palazzina Cinese
One of the things that has made generations of English aristocrats fall in Love with Sicily over the centuries is the mutual passion for eccentrics. I don’t mean subtle characters, like one of my beloved uncles whose favourite food was broad bean and custard sandwiches. I mean flamboyant filthy rich people who could construct a…
Sicilian Ceramics in Palermo
Last summer I dashed down to Sicily and wanted to purchase some gorgeous Sicilian majolica ceramic art for my new house. So I toddled off to “Tre Erre” in Palermo. What to buy? An owl? Something fruity? Something fishy? How about some heads? Or even Medusa’s head? In the…
The Jewish Ghosts of Palermo
There was a Jewish presence in Sicily for centuries, possibly from before the birth of Jesus. The Jews were the only outsiders who made their homes in Sicily and became part of her population without invading. They simply turned up, fitted in and made themselves indispensable. The Jews were the literate and educated members…
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 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…
A Scandalous Story about the Mafia, Extortion and Cake
Sicily’s Anti-Extortion spokesman is Arrested while Extorting 100k Euros In one of the most delicious news items ever reported since I’ve been living in Sicily, it turns out that one of the main men in charge of combating extortion in Sicily has just been arrested… for extortion. It was “Aggravated extortion,” in fact, which means…
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…
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…
PHOTO GALLERY: Palermo and other Sicilian towns
I am delighted to have permission to reblog this from dorsetdaze All the pictures, and the article, are by Dave, a talented photographer with an eye for the unusual. Sicily: a land of many faces March 13, 2014 Traffic and graffiti: two of Palermo’s trademarks. SICILY, eh? One minute it can make you smile, the next…
Multicultural Sicily: The Good, the Bad and the Downright Ridiculous
This afternoon we went for a walk around central Palermo. In Piazza Politeama we saw these fellows. The man at the bottom was sitting cross-legged on a glass tumbler. All along Via Ruggiero Settimo there were buskers playing drums and guitars, there were fire-breathers and jugglers, there were men on stilts making balloon animals for the…
The Life and Adventures of Santa Rosalia, Patron Saint of Palermo
I described, in my previous post, the sanctuary of Saint Rosalia, which is a baroque church facade with a drippy cave behind it. Now I’ll tell you about her amazing life. Santa Rosalia was born in about 1130, when Sicily was ruled by the Normans. The king was Roger the Second. I’ve been inside his…
The Sanctuary of Saint Rosalia on Monte Pellegrino, Palermo
Walking through the doorway of a magnificent Baroque church, and finding youself in a gloomy cave with water dripping on your head, has to be one of life’s most interesting experiences. The church is the Sanctuary of Santa Rosalia. It stands at the very top of Monte Pellegrino (Pilgrim’s Mountain), which overlooks the whole bay…
A bird’s eye view of Piazza San Domenico, Palermo
I took this photo from the rooftop café of La Rinascente, a swanky department store in central Palermo. This is PIAZZA SAN DOMENICO. On top of the giant column stands the virgin Mary. The piazza takes its name from the Chiesa San Domenico, which is out of frame to the left. The street with red…
The ‘Cult of the Beheaded People’ in Palermo
There’s a small road in Palermo called “Via dei Decollati,” which means “Street of the Beheaded People.” In medieval times, this area was just outside the city and criminals were beheaded here. Unfortunately the Sicilian government was corrupt in those days – not any more, of course! – and many innocent people were beaheaded, too….
The Italian Legal System and How to Evade it
Italians are a bunch of scofflaws. They think the laws apply to everyone else, but they personally are a special exception. All of them think that. Which explains Italy, really. Sicilians take this to a whole new level. For a Sicilian, any rules, in any context, are created purely for you to see how many…
The Dangerously Truthful Diary of a Sicilian Housewife 