Usually, people drive through Marineo. Statale 118, the road leading to the Bosco di Ficuzza (one of the preferred picnic-in-the-wood destinations for Palermitans) passes among the houses, cutting its way through the main piazza and then hastening out, towards the countryside. There is not – or better there was not – a reason to stop. Then Carmelo Barchetta came up with an idea.
Up to yesterday, just a few people knew Màcari. This small hamlet of white houses at the foot of Monte Passo del Lupo, in fact, has always remained secluded from the lively San Vito Lo Capo, just a couple of kilometers away.
He has come back, but for the last time, they told us. After twenty years, the time has come to say goodbye and surely we know that, sooner or later, it was inevitable. But we are sorry, of course. Inspector Montalbano, for many, had become a family member.
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that 90% of the people who reach the beautiful island of Favignana wants to go to the beach. The most famous cove is Cala Rossa (Red Cove), which is called that way because, according to tradition, its waters were colored red due to the amount of blood lost by the fallen during the Battle of the Egadi (241 b.C.).
Not so long ago Mondello was a swamp. Today it is considered a pearl, a welcoming seaside resort, the sea of Palermo, but back then it wasn’t a place where anyone would like to go.
For many years people have left Favara. Up to the unification of Italy, it had been a well-kept rural village, with an imposing mother church, a castle, and several elegant mansions where the local nobility and bourgeoisie lived.
When I attended University, I was so lucky to have Natale Tedesco as a professor of Italian literature. To me, a young student, he looked very old, even though he wasn’t even 60 at the time.
If you look at it from the Tyrrhenian coast of Sicily, Salina looks exactly alike the other Aeolian islands floating on the horizon. It is only when you get close that you notice that it is much greener.
Let’s face it right away: I won’t tell you about the Valley of the Temples. Although it is a wonderful place (which I had the opportunity to visit with an archaeologist, a fantastic experience arranged by Coopculture), it is not the only place to visit in Agrigento.
It was called the “white sore”, cloaking it in romanticism, and it was said that it affected people with a pure soul. As a matter of fact, tuberculosis was a really bad disease and, if it caught you, there was a real chance of dying.