The west of Sicily fills some people with dread. On the east coast, they
rhapsodise about the views of Mount Etna and the citrus groves around
Syracuse. They stretch out on the beaches at Taormina. But the west remains
another Sicily, an outer darkness. People whisper about the mafia, the
influence of Africa, the difficulty of finding anywhere that sells low-fat
milk. Everyone notices the difference. The east is ordered and industrious;
the west, they say, is boisterous and impetuous — just a little wild.
Cultural historians point to patterns of colonisation. The east was colonised
by the Greeks, upright folk who delighted in well-run temples. The west was
colonised by Arabs, dangerous sensualists who devoted their energies to
pleasure palaces and harems. The distinction between the two Sicilys lies in
this historic divide between earnest application and carefree indulgence.
Call me contrary, but the wild west sounds like the best bit. If we want order
and industry, there is always Switzerland. I decided to live a little, and
headed west to Palermo.
Those who know it call it the most underrated city in Italy. It is chaotic,
fascinating, frustrating, unruly, wonderful, raucous and endlessly charming.
It is not a nest of thieves and wife-stealers. The driving may be a trifle
deranged, but it should hold little fear for anyone who has negotiated the
M25 on a Friday evening. Statistically, I am told, you are more likely to be
mugged in Notting Hill.
Like Venice or Naples or Milan, Palermo is a former capital, with all the
confidence, the cultural sophistication and the grand architecture that
implies. If the city is a bit full-on, a bit raw, that is its appeal. This
is not sanitised Florence. Its treasures, from Byzantine mosaics to baroque
palaces, are not museums swamped with tourists in search of sterile photo
opportunities, but part of the life and blood of the city. Many of the
palaces were broken up into tenements decades, even centuries, ago. The
grand facades are adorned with laundry, the balconies with potted plants and
broken bicycles, while the courtyards are football pitches for teams of
ragged boys.
This Dickensian quality is what makes Palermo so addictive. Life here is a
very public affair. Restaurants spill out into the streets, and so does
everything else. Neighbours carry on shouted conversations through open
doors. Drivers block traffic to arrange lunch with friends on the pavement.
Girls at upper windows haul up the morning bread in baskets while discussing
boys with their friends below.
In Palermo, even death seems to be a public matter. At the Convento dei
Cappuccini, a jolly monk sold me a ticket for the catacombs. His
predecessors offered a rudimentary mummification service to the citizens of
18thand 19th-century Palermo, and people queued to be buried here. I
followed long descending passageways down towards the underworld. The air
grew cold and clammy. The silence of the tomb closed around me. I stepped
gingerly into the first corridor. On either side, dead bodies were strung up
along the walls in two tiers. They were dressed in Sunday best. In most
cases, the clothes had survived rather better than the corpses. Many of the
heads protruding from starched collars were reduced to skulls; perhaps they
hadn’t kept up the payments on their mummification. Others were remarkably
well preserved. With his ruddy complexion, Signor Antonio, who died in 1844,
looked healthier than I do most mornings.
They say the Sicilian character, with its penchant for private loyalties and
private justice, was formed by foreign domination. For a time — two or three
thousand years — Sicily was on everyone’s route to everywhere else. The list
of invaders features all the usual suspects — Phoenicians, Carthaginians,
Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Byzantines, Spaniards.
Among them is a surprising name — the Normans. Worried that hanging around the
castle might mean being shipped off to England with its bad weather and
loutish locals, parties of Norman knights headed south to look for a place
in the sun. When they got to Sicily, they moved in.
The Norman invasion of Sicily — 1071 and all that — has a Pythonesque air.
Even the names seem to be self-parodic: King Roger; William the Bad and his
mincing son William the Good; George the Admiral and Walter the Archbishop.
Their first attempt at invasion ended when they bivouacked on a hill
swarming with spiders — their bites caused them to fart painfully, and they
were obliged to beat a noisy retreat. After a second attempt, presumably
with the benefit of insect repellent, the Normans made Palermo their
capital, the centre of their expanding empire and the finest city in the
Mediterranean.
The city’s greatest treasure dates from the Norman period — the brilliant
mosaics of the Cappella Palatina, its walls swarming with figures in
glittering, dreamy gold. Just down the road is the Norman cathedral, built
by Walter of the Mill, an Englishman dispatched to Sicily as a tutor by our
own Henry II. Teaching didn’t suit his temperament, and Walter soon
bludgeoned his way up the clerical ladder to become archbishop. Envious of
Walter’s accomplishments, William the Good created the unsurpassable
cathedral of Monreale a few miles from the city.
The vanquished Arabs taught the Normans how to live like princes. I headed out
to La Ziza, to see where William the Bad enjoyed his down time. One of a
series of rural pleasure palaces, La Ziza is an Islamic creation with that
particular talent for exquisite oases of shade and coolness and fretted
privacies. The ceilings are high and honeycombed. The interlocking rooms
overlook a central fountained courtyard. Here, reclining on cushioned
divans, gazing out on gardens where exotic beasts roamed in the foliage, the
Sicilian Normans presumably penned gloating postcards to their cousins in
Sussex about the wine, the women, the weather and the fact that you could
buy a whole palazzo for the price you’d pay for a three-bedroom terrace in
Hastings.
The Normans are alive and well round at the puppet theatre. Marionettes are a
Sicilian tradition, and there are performances most nights in one of the
little theatres on the backstreets. The stories are based on crusader themes
from Sicily’s history, the conquest of the island’s Muslim rulers by
chivalrous Christian knights such as the Normans. The clash of civilisations
leads to an alarming body count. By the final curtain, the stage was
knee-deep in marionette corpses, to the whooping delight of the children.
Even the city’s most spirited fans, however, eventually need a break from
Palermo. I headed west to Erice, Italy’s most spectacular hill town.
The road climbs spectacularly up slopes that Virgil compared to Mount Athos.
Clinging to the top, some 2,500 feet up, is a medieval town of churches and
forts, of silent cobbled lanes and miniature piazzas.
From the town ramparts, you gaze down over most of western Sicily. Coastal
plains push inland to the mountains of the interior and of the island’s
north coast. To the south lies the west coast of the island, stretching away
towards Marsala. Beyond, the Egadi Islands are sprinkled across a perfect
sea. It is said that on a clear day, you can see Cape Bon in Tunisia. On any
day, you are looking at one of the great panoramas of the Mediterranean. I
SPIRALLED down again to ground level and followed back roads across the
western reaches of Sicily. The country opened out, unfenced, unencumbered.
Ploughed fields and straggling vineyards rose and fell. The farmhouses, many
of them abandoned, were plain to the point of severity. The villages seemed
remote, marooned in provincial isolation. In the main square of Palazzo
Adriano, where Cinema Paradiso was filmed, I half expected the old
projectionist to amble round the corner, wheeling his bicycle beside him and
musing on the fates of all the young men who had fled north to the bigger
cities of Rome and Milan.
In the fading light, I arrived at Mazara del Vallo. After the bleakness of the
interior, this baroque, civilised town came as a surprise. I checked in at a
luxurious spa. Well-dressed crowds promenaded along elegant avenues. Mazara
faces the sea, turning its back on the hard interior. Once one of the great
Arab ports, the town still has one of the largest fishing fleets in the
Mediterranean. Tunisian immigrants, who come to work on the boats, have
brought a renewed Arab flavour to some of the old quarters of the town.
Mazara’s greatest catch in recent years has been the Dancing Satyr, an
exquisite Greek figure that was pulled up from the sea bed in a fishing net.
It now resides in a converted 15th-century church. The bronze sculpture is
most frequently described as orgiastic. With his head thrown back, his lips
parted, his limbs convulsed, he certainly seems to be a chap in the throes
of a very good time. It is a beautiful piece, and one of the greatest
classical finds of recent decades.
With its hint of Africa, Sicily can seem remote from the rest of Italy, from
Europe; a place far from the continent’s metropolitan centres. But it is
not. The point about Mazara, about Palermo and about Sicily is not that they
are on the edge of Europe, but that they lie at the centre of the
Mediterranean, at the heart of all European culture.
Travel brief
Getting there: fly to Palermo from Stansted with Ryanair (0871 246
0000, www.ryanair.com ),
or from Gatwick with EasyJet (www.easyjet.com
). Where to stay: in Palermo, the Hotel Posta (00 39-091 587338, www.hotelpostapalermo.it
) has doubles from £80, B&B. The Centrale Palace Hotel (091 336666, www.angalahotels.it
) has doubles from £120, B&B. Where to eat: part of the joy of
Sicily is its cuisine, with a wealth of local specialities. In Palermo, try
Gagini (35 Via Cassari; 091 321518; two courses from £16) for classic
Sicilian fare. More stylish is 091 (10/12 Via Castrofilippo; two courses
from £25), which serves contemporary Sicilian dishes. Antica Focacceria San
Francesco (58 Via Paternostro; 091 320264; set menus from £15) is a
traditional family-run eatery.
Tour operators: Italian Expressions (020 7433 2675,
www.expressionsholidays.co.uk ) has four nights at the magnificent Grand
Hotel Villa Igiea in Palermo from £629pp, including flights from London; add
on a three-night stay at the Kempinski Hotel Giardino in Mazara del Vallo
from £320pp, including car hire. Alternatively, try Simpson Travel (0845 811
6504, www.simpsontravel.com
). Puppet performances: Mimmo Cuticchio (95 Via Bara all’Olivella;
www.figlidartecuticchio.com) has daily performances in summer for £4.
Stanley Stewart travelled as a guest of Italian Expressions
