On December 26, 1798, Horatio Nelson’s HMS Vanguard arrived in Palermo. Aboard the British admiral’s ship, there was a very important cargo.
It takes just a couple of minutes to drive through the village, with its modern buildings and wide streets radiating from rounded squares. The well-known architect Paolo Portoghesi designed one of the latter, it is a multilevel space with colonnades and caryatids. It’s empty. We don’t meet anyone, there are cars parked here and there, but no trace of the occupants. New Poggioreale is a ghost town, even more than old Poggioreale.
The road is narrow and winding, with holes and depressions. Challenging, like most of the Sicilian roads. So I decided to walk the last bit, letting the old walls and the green profile of the hill unfold alongside me.
Via Dante was once, and to a large extent still is, one of Palermo’s elegant streets. It was opened in 1892 and called Via dell’Esposizione, in homage to the great national exhibition that had taken place the previous year, to celebrate the splendor of Palermo entrepreneurs.
During these very hot days, your only desire is to go to the beach! A few weeks ago, I wrote about five splendid Sicilian beaches. Here are five more!
It all started with Isola Bella, a tiny island which today, together with the panorama from the Greek theater, is the most photographed subject in Taormina.
When I was a child, one of the rules of good manners was “don’t write on the walls” and, if you got caught, you had an issue. Even as an adult, to tell the truth, it’s better not to do that … unless you are an artist! In that case, we are talking about Street Art.
May 4, 1933, was a solemn occasion for Pantalica. That day, in fact, its little station received an absolutely high-ranking guest. No less than the Italian king Vittorio Emanuele III.
I see it emerging from the Tyrrhenian Sea like a mirage, two twin mountains bathed in a light blue haze. A weekend in Salina, one of the beautiful islands of the Aeolian archipelago, is a perfect way to start summer. If you are going too, here are some ideas on what to do.
It was like seeing them. Roger Peyrefitte sitting under the trees and writing. Ernest Hemingway sipping a drink on the terrace, Greta Garbo and Coco Chanel under the pergola, to preserve the complexion from the sun’s rays. And then Salvador Dalì, David Herbert Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, and many others, all the guests of Casa Cuseni, the first residence for artists and scholars in Europe, in the 1950s, in Taormina.