Sicily Archives - The Patroclus

July 23, 2024October 2, 2024

A Return to Palermo

A return visit to Palermo gave me the opportunity to take photographs I had been unable to take before, and reflect more on the extraordinary legacy of Norman Sicily.

My post on Norman Sicily was written back in 2019, but illustrated with photographs I took on a visit in 2012. Recently (July 2024) we revisited Sicily, and I was able to take some more photographs. Rather than rewrite the original article and replace the images, I have decided to write a supplementary article, but if you are interested in the fascinating story of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, I recommend that you read the original article for more historical background.

The Photography

Those 2012 photographs were all taken on slow (ISO 50) Fujichrome Velvia film, using either a Hasselblad 501 C/M medium format camera or a Horseman 45FA large-format camera. For indoor shots I used the Hasselblad, but Velvia is a film meant for outdoor landscape photography, and the colour casts from low-light indoor photography were quite strong. The slow speed of the film also required exposures too long for hand-holding, which meant that I was restricted to situations where I could place the camera on a hard surface or brace it against something like a pillar (tripods are of course not allowed indoors).

This time I had my Fujifilm GFX-50R with me, which had several advantages. With indoor photography using this camera, I generally set the aperture and exposure manually, and leave the ISO on automatic (the GFX-50R goes up to ISO 128000). High ISOs mean greater digital “noise” (like the grain in fast film) but the large sensor on the 50R means the noise is less obvious. When necessary I then used a program called Topaz DeNoise AI to reduce the noise further. I was also able to use digital perspective correction to reduce the “leaning back” effect when things are photographed from below.

Cefalù

After taking our car across the strait to Messina on the ferry, our first stop was Cefalù, on the north coast. This town is spectacularly situated on a headland below a giant rock, and it was here, in 1131, that the Norman King Roger II commissioned a cathedral in which he planned to be buried. I have not come across any explanation as to why he chose Cefalù, but in the event his son William I decided to bury Roger in Palermo Cathedral, so he did not get his wish. It would have been a beautiful and peaceful place though.

Beautiful Cefalù still is, although you could not have described it as peaceful when we visited. The throngs of people were not there to soak up the glories of Norman-Sicilian architecture; these days Cefalù is a beach resort, and they are there to soak up the sun. We were there for the Duomo, however, so proceeded there through the crowded streets. It is a very beautiful building, with – to my untutored eye – a fascinating mixture of architectural styles. The twin campanili have Romanesque double-arched windows, but the front portico is a mixture. In the centre is a curved Romanesque arch, with pointy curved arches either side which are not European Gothic but Fatimid Arab. I suspect the decoration above the portico is also inspired by Arab architecture. Being surrounded by palm trees gives it all an exotic feel as well.

Cefalù Duomo — Cefalù, the duomo showing a mixture of European and Arabic architectural styles. Behind at the right is the giant rock that sits above the town. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

We arrived just as a wedding was about to start, but I was still able to grab some photographs, in particular some of the huge Christos Pantokrator mosaic in the apse. This was executed by Greek craftsmen brought from Constantinople, but it strikes me as not having quite the remoteness that one sees in Byzantine religious art (where iconoclasm was still a memory, and realism not encouraged). Instead there seems to be something of the western preoccupation with the humanity of Christ. And as ever I was struck by how much more sophisticated it is than most of the art that was being produced elsewhere in Europe at the time. A couple of weeks later we were in the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia, looking at works from one or two centuries later, and there was no comparison. The first depictions of emotion in post-classical western art are attributed to Giotto in the 13th-14th Centuries, but this came first by a long way.

Monreale

From Cefalù we continued our journey to Palermo, or to be more accurate, to Monreale. This town sits on a hill above the Conca d’Oro – Palermo’s coastal plain. Staying there would provide us with a bit of relief from the July heat at sea level, and also from driving in Palermo’s traffic.

What makes Monreale famous is not the climate or the traffic though, but its cathedral. The duomo was commissioned in the late 1100s by Roger II’s grandson William II (“The Good”), and represents probably the high point of this wonderful Norman-Sicilian syncretic tradition.

Monreale Duomo — Monreale, the Duomo. The nave, with illustrations of stories from Genesis. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

In the photograph above the sort-of Romanesque and sort-of Gothic arches are in fact, like those on the portico at Cefalù, very much Fatimid Arab.

The best part of the Monreale Duomo is the magnificent Christos Pantokrator in the apse, even greater in my opinion than the one in Cefalù. Unfortunately this year the apse mosaics are undergoing restoration and are all behind scaffolding. There is a large print of the mosaics hung on the front of the scaffolding, but it’s nothing like the real thing. So that was a bit disappointing; instead here is a picture I took in 2012.

Another disappointment was not being able to take a close-up photo with a long lens of the mosaic showing William II presenting the church to the Virgin Mary. Here is a version from 2012 – the mosaic would either have been done while William was alive, or shortly after his death.

To give you an idea of the sort of effect I was hoping for, here is a picture of Noah and his ark from our recent visit to Monreale. I zoomed in close, and then used software perspective correction to compensate for the fact that I was taking from below. I had really wanted a picture of the William II mosaic to which I could give a similar treatment. Oh well.

Monreale Duomo, illustration of Genesis (note the bodies of people drowned in the Flood, and separate quarters on the ark for men and women). Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 100-200mm lens (click to enlarge).

The Benedictine Cloisters

Thankfully not undergoing renovation was the adjoining Benedictine cloister, dating from around 1200. This is a lovely peaceful place, especially if you manage to get there between tour groups.

Monreale Cloisters — Monreale cloisters. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 100-200mm lens (click to enlarge).

It’s another wonderful stylistic synthesis: an authentic Benedictine quadrangular plan, Arab arches, Greek mosaic patterns on the columns, Norman-French carvings on the capitals. And the overall exotic flavour is enhanced by the palm trees.

The Cappella Palatina

We then headed down into Palermo, with our destination the complex known as the Royal Palace, or the Palace of the Normans (Palazzo Reale or Palazzo dei Normanni). It also hosts the modern Sicilian Regional Assembly. From the outside the effect is all rather 18th-Century, due to the various accretions it has received over the years, but the core of the building started as a Norman castle built by Count Roger I shortly after the conquest of Sicily in 1072, and over time more was added, most notably the Cappella Palatina (Palace Chapel) in 1132, by Roger’s son Roger II. (Roger II was recognised as King of Sicily by the Pope in return for some military assistance).

Like the cathedrals at Cefalù and at Monreale, the Cappella Palatina shows influences from all the Sicilian cultures. Like the others, there is an overall Norman plan, Latin-themed illustrations executed by Greek mosaic craftsmen, and Arab-inspired arches. There is also an extraordinary Arabic wooden muqarnas ceiling, inscribed with Koranic texts.

Outside there is a stone inscribed with blessings in Latin, Greek and Arabic. No more explicit statement could have been made of Roger’s intent that there should be peace between the various Sicilian peoples.

The Sala di Ruggero

Earlier disappointments quickly faded when we headed upstairs from the Cappella Palatina to the so-called Sala di Ruggero (Roger’s Room). When we last visited in 2012 there was a ban on photography here, which unlike most of the other visitors, I had actually observed. In 2024, to my delight, there was no longer any such ban so I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

This room, presumably a reception room rather than private quarters (some describe it as a bedroom though), is beautiful by any standard but extraordinary by the standard of the 12th Century.

The fierce-looking leopards in the picture above have become a somewhat common sight in Sicily as they have been adopted as the logo of a chain of expensive souvenir shops. I suppose they are out of copyright by now.

The Sala di Ruggero leads off a central “wind tower” (another Arab architectural feature). The idea of a wind tower is that as the upper part heats up in the sun, the hot air rises and escapes through the windows at the top, thus creating an updraft which draws cooler air in from below. It seemed that the upper windows were not open this time, but they had been on our previous visit and it was quite effective then.

The Cathedral

We did not have time to do much more than photograph the outside of the cathedral as we passed, so there will be something to do on our next visit. The cathedral was started in 1185 by an archbishop of Palermo whose name has been variously mangled as Walter Ophamil and Gualtiero Offamiglia, but was originally Walter of the Mill; he was an Englishman.

It was built over, and incorporates, the remains of an earlier Byzantine basilica which had been turned into a mosque after the Arab conquest. In the late 18th Century someone added various neoclassical features, including a lantern and dome. It is this dome, which looks more or less like those over every other baroque church in Sicily, which fooled me the first time I saw it. It draws the eye and, used as I am to making sweeping judgements, it created an immediate impression of baroque architecture and I rather lost interest. But look closer. Even better, use your thumb or your hand (depending on how you are viewing this) to cover the dome.

Palermo Duomo — Palermo Cathedral. Fujifilm GFX-50R camera, 32-64mm lens (click to enlarge).

I find that by blocking out the dome in this way, the other features – the pointy crenellations, the Arab-style arches and so forth – assume greater prominence, and suddenly the building looks much more eastern and exotic.

The End of the Hautevilles

It was all too good to last. The de Hauteville line died out and, through William II’s Aunt Constance, Sicily passed to her son, the Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen. Frederick was every bit as tolerant as Roger had been, and a polymath who deserved his nickname of “Stupor Mundi“, the wonder of the world. But his tolerance of Arabs and Jews infuriated the Popes, and in due course they engineered the accession of the French House of Anjou to the throne of Sicily.

I find it strange and a bit sad that modern Sicilians look back on the Norman era as a golden age, especially the reign of William II “The Good”. But the Sicilians never really got to rule themselves (some would say that even the unification of Italy only replaced one foreign dynasty with another), and there can be no argument that the cultural synthesis achieved under the Normans all those centuries ago is something to be proud of.

March 6, 2022September 25, 2024

Princes Under the Volcano

Through much of the 19th Century, the wealthiest and most influential family in Sicily was English. A classic history – Princes under the Volcano – tells their story.

I’m going to structure this post around that book, of which I am particularly fond and which I have returned to a couple of times, despite its considerable length. Princes under the Volcano is by Raleigh Trevelyan, and is subtitled “Two Hundred Years of a British Dynasty in Sicily”. It was published in 1972 and reprinted in 2002, and again in 2012. As far as I can tell it is not currently in print, with very few new copies available online, but it seems easy enough to find second-hand editions. There was also an Italian edition (Principi sotto il vulcano) which was very popular and may still be in print.

Raleigh Trevelyan (1923-2014) was an interesting character in his own right. A descendant of the Elizabethan courtier and adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh, and related to the great “Whig historian” G.M. Trevelyan, he was born to a posh army family in British India. In due course he was sent off to boarding school in England. From Winchester College he went straight into the army in 1942. As a young officer seconded to the Green Howards, he took part in the fighting at Anzio in 1944, of which he wrote a harrowing account (he was wounded twice and many members of his battalion died). Later he was part of the British Military Mission in Rome, remaining there for two years and forming a lasting bond with Italy.

Cover of *The Fortress* by Raleigh Trevelyan, a memoir of trench warfare at Anzio in 1944. This is a copy which I inherited from my late father-in-law (click to enlarge).

After the war he commenced a career in publishing and as a writer himself produced several extensively-researched works on historical subjects. It was this that led to him being approached by a member of the Whitaker family to write Princes under the Volcano.

The “British Dynasty” that is the subject of this book was founded by Benjamin Ingham (1784-1861) and passed through Ingham’s nephew to the Whitaker family. The great bulk – and it must literally have been a great bulk – of material on which the book is based is formed of two collections of papers: firstly those of Ingham himself, and secondly the letters and diaries of Tina Whitaker (1858-1957). Tina also wrote a volume of reminiscences of Anglo-Sicilian political exiles (Sicily and England, still in print in the Italian edition).

*Sicilia e Inghilterra* (*Sicily and England*), cover of the Italian edition.

Benjamin’s papers are exclusively to do with his business, while Tina’s are full of gossip. This makes the earlier and later parts of the book a bit different in style, but as Trevelyan points out in the introduction, that does rather lend itself to the subject matter. Benjamin Ingham’s career covered the tumultuous years of the Napoleonic Wars and the exile of the Spanish Bourbon King Ferdinand of Naples to Sicily under the protection of Admiral Nelson, then later the failed revolutions of 1849, the convulsions of the Risorgimento, Garibaldi’s campaign in Sicily, the fall of the House of Bourbon and the rise of the Mafia. Throughout it all Ingham records the events around him while grumbling about how bad wars and revolutions are for business.

Tina, on the other hand, was of the generation that didn’t make the money – it spent it. The wife of the wealthiest man in Sicily, related by blood and marriage to both English and Sicilian aristocracy, she entertained kings, emperors and celebrities, and she and her daughters were presented at court in London. The Whitakers knew the family of Giuseppe di Lampedusa, and many of the real people who ended up thinly disguised as characters in Lampedusa’s book Il Gattopardo (The Leopard). Both Ingham’s and Tina’s accounts are fascinating seams to mine for nuggets of insight into Sicilian history, and Trevelyan selects his material well.

Note: until I came to write this post I had not realised that “gattopardo” does not actually mean “leopard” in Italian. It refers to a smaller animal called a serval. Lampedusa’s English publishers decided to change the name to something a bit catchier.

English Merchants in Sicily

What were English merchants doing in Sicily anyway? The answer goes back to Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and Portugal and the subsequent disruption of the Iberian wine trade. England was a great importer of sherry from Spain and port from Portugal, and many English firms were established to produce, transport and sell these wines. The fact that the wines were fortified with brandy, by the way, was less to do with English preference for strong drink than with the fact that the spirit acted as a preservative for the long sea voyage.

In 1773, an English trader called John Woodhouse had realised that the wines of Marsala and Trapani on the west coast of Sicily, made in a similar way to sherry and port, might also sell well in Britain. It seems to have been a bit of a niche market at first but three decades later the supply of Spanish and Portuguese sherry and port was interrupted by the war, and the trade from Marsala took off.

Trapani and the Egadi Islands, Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia film (click to enlarge).

Life on the west coast of Sicily at the end of the 18th Century would have been tough. Although the Mafia would not take on its modern, organised form for several decades, brigandage and kidnapping were common. Inland there were few roads, and those few were in terrible condition. The writ of the distant Bourbon government in Naples did not really run outside the larger towns. But for a young Englishman with a taste for adventure and a view to making a fortune, it seems to have had many attractions.

The photograph below shows the rugged country inland from Sicily’s west coast – still growing grapes for Marsala wine. At the end of the 18th Century there would have been no modern road here, and quite possibly bandits behind the rocks to take potshots at travellers.

Near Castel Baida. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar C 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia film. Three images, merged in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

Enter Benjamin Ingham

Ingham was the son of a Yorkshire family that traded in cloth. He arrived in Sicily in 1806 with a view to opening up an export market for their products, but quickly realised that there was more money to be made selling Marsala wine back to Britain and America. As his business grew he sent back to his family for help, and in due course William Whitaker, the son of Ingham’s sister Mary, was sent out to help him.

Ingham was almost a caricature of the dour and unemotional Yorkshireman. A Whitaker family story (apocryphal, I hope) had him, when nephew William died suddenly, writing to Mary saying “Your son is dead. Send me another.”

The replacement nephew was Joseph Whitaker (1802-1884) who seems to have been even more dour than Ingham – not a particularly pleasant or generous person at all, in fact. But the young man does seem to have been an excellent administrator, and it must have been due in part to him that Ingham accumulated the phenomenal wealth most of which Joseph and his family were to inherit.

The British Connection

There were other connections between Sicily and Britain. Many of them date to the period when Lord Nelson was active in the Mediterranean. In fact Nelson seems to have helped kick the Marsala wine trade along with a substantial purchase of wine for his ships – no doubt Nelson was pleased to find that there were British merchants in Sicily to deal with.

Then when the French armies and local revolutionaries chased King Ferdinand IV and his queen out of Naples, it was ships of the Royal Navy under Nelson’s command that evacuated the royal party to Sicily. Also on board were the British Ambassador Sir William Hamilton and his wife Emma, who had already started her famous affair with Nelson.

Note: Queen Maria Carolina of Naples was unlikely to have been a fan of the French Republic. Her sister Marie Antoinette had been decapitated by them.

For a period Sicily remained under de facto British rule, and there were some who thought it would be a good idea to make it permanent, as with Malta. To this end in 1812, a Sicilian parliament and a new Sicilian constitution on the British model were proclaimed. But the idea of Sicily as either a British territory or an independent state under British protection was met unenthusiastically in London. The island was handed back to the Bourbons, the constitution was immediately cancelled and the old regime returned, even more oppressive than before.

The constitution had been an idealistic concept, but hopelessly impractical. To expect a feudal society to adopt a range of liberal institutions at a single stroke was never going to work.

Nevertheless, and perhaps because it had never been tried and shown not to work, the stillborn 1812 “British” constitution occupied a special place in the imagination of Sicilian radicals. Subsequent outbreaks of unrest in 1820, in the failed Italy-wide revolutions of 1849, and the Risorgimento in 1860-61, were always accompanied by calls for its restoration.

Not only that, but Britain itself came to be seen by many Sicilians, rather romantically, as the only foreign power which had their interests at heart. And when Sicilian and other Italian patriots attracted the unwelcome attention of the authorities and had to flee, they often ended up in London.

Garibaldi and “The Thousand”

In 1860, Garibaldi and his famous thousand red-shirted volunteers landed at Marsala and drove the Bourbon forces out of Sicily. The exiles returned, and the Bourbons were replaced by the Piedmontese House of Savoy in the form of King Victor Emmanuel II.

Although there was in theory now a single Kingdom of Italy, for many Sicilians one foreign regime had simply been replaced by another. The catalogue of mistakes made by the new Italian government in handling its new southern territories is long indeed and would take this post in a very different direction. Suffice to say that the Piedmontese Prime Minister Cavour was not interested in any form of autonomy for Sicily, so a bunch of northern Italian administrators arrived who regarded the locals with contempt and horror, and many poor Sicilians found times harder even than they had under the Bourbons. Banditry, bloodshed and the rise of the Mafia were the result.

Throughout all this period of upheavals and excitement, Ingham kept getting richer and richer. He had married a Sicilian noblewoman (and was somewhat bothered by her impecunious relatives). He got into banking, and was said to have lent money to most of the aristocratic Sicilian families. He also got into shipping and before long had his own fleet. He died in 1861, just after Sicily had been absorbed into the new Kingdom of Italy. Part of his substantial fortune – and control of the business – passed to his nephew and long-time associate, Joseph Whitaker.

Ingham Whitaker Marsala — Label from a bottle of Marsala from Ingham Whitaker & Co.

Joseph and his wife Sophia had had eleven children (a twelfth died in infancy), and on Joseph’s death in 1884 the firm passed to two of his sons, another William and another Joseph, the latter known all his life as Pip. Pip seems to have taken more after his mother than his father – a gentle character much interested in natural history and, later on, archaeology. But it is Pip’s wife Caterina (Tina) who through her papers becomes the central character of the rest of the book.

Caterina (Tina) Whitaker, née Scalia

I find Tina fascinating, even though I suspect that I would not like her very much in real life. Born in England, baptised as an Anglican and married to an Englishman, she was a stickler for form and must have come across as a rather forbidding type of Edwardian snob to those she thought her social inferiors. She divided her time between Sicily and England, and when the Whitakers hosted King Edward VII at their Palermo villa in 1907, she informed the king that he was on “British soil”. And yet her parents were both Italian.

Earlier I mentioned the tendency of Italian patriots to end up in England when they ran foul of their governments (most parts of Italy in the early 19th Century were ruled by foreign dynasties or the Papacy, and even the sort-of-Italian Piedmontese took a dim view of radical nationalists). One such exile was Pompeo Anichini, a member of a respectable Tuscan family; Tina later maintained that they were nobility, but they weren’t really. Anichini became a British citizen, but kept up his links with Italy, trading with Benjamin Ingham, and mixing in pro-Italian circles in London with the likes of Mazzini.

Trevelyan could not find out much about the woman Anichini married, but their daughter Giulia was a striking young woman who had many friends among the italophile English aristocracy. Despite having been born in London and brought up an Anglican, she felt herself to be very much an Italian. However when circumstances allowed her to “return” to Italy later in life she found the reality did not really live up to the dream, and instead increasingly felt herself to be an Englishwoman living in Italy – the fate of many a deracinated exile.

Still in London, in due course Giulia Anichini met a dashing young Sicilian exile called Alfonso Scalia, and married him. Scalia’s father seems to have come from a rather boring middle-class Palermitan family, but his Neapolitan mother Caterina was a real firebrand who joined the Carbonari anti-Bourbon secret society. She passed on her liberal views and her spirit to her two sons Alfonso and Luigi, and when Bourbon troops came to search their house in Palermo for incriminating papers (which Alfonso and his brother were at that very moment destroying), Caterina stood at the door and told the soldiers that they would have to shoot her first. While the soldiers pondered how to proceed, the brothers, having destroyed the evidence, escaped out of a back window.

I find it slightly amusing that the ultra-conservative Tina was named after such a radical grandmother, but according to Trevelyan Tina tended to downplay her paternal ancestry anyway, it not really having been as posh as she would have liked it to be.

In his day job Alfonso Scalia was a captain in the merchant marine. Despite his youth (he was still in his mid-20s), during the uprising of 1849 he commanded revolutionary troops in Catania, shelling Bourbon naval vessels. When the revolution failed, he fled to London, married Giulia and set up a household which became a centre for the exile community, and Giulia’s aristocratic friends.

Return to Sicily

In 1860 Garibaldi swept into Sicily and before the London exiles really had time to organise, Palermo had fallen to the redshirts. However Scalia arrived as soon as he could, and Garibaldi quickly made him a lieutenant-colonel in the artillery; he was later to rise to the rank of lieutenant-general in the army of unified Italy. After Garibaldi’s campaign moved to the mainland, Giulia and Tina (still a little girl) came out and joined him in Naples. Tina would spend most of the rest of her long life dividing her time between Italy and England.

As Tina grew up she trained as an opera singer, and would have been a very good one. By all accounts she was much fêted and was on the verge of a professional career when she became engaged to Pip Whitaker; they married in 1882, and seem to have been referred to in society as “The Pips”. Pip had to spend part of his time running the wine business in Marsala, and was already showing an interest in archaeology, in particular excavating Phoenician remains on the island of Motya near Marsala (“Mozia” in standard Italian). Tina on the other hand was not at all keen on Marsala and spent as much time in Palermo as she could, when she was not back in England.

Shortly after the birth of their second daughter, old Joseph Whitaker died and Pip became the richest man in Sicily. Their house, Villa Malfitano, was one of the most impressive in Palermo, and over the years was visited by the rich and famous, and a few independently wealthy British layabouts who sound a bit like Evelyn Waugh characters. Tina’s diary and letters mention them all (the posher the better) and Trevelyan does a good job of turning the succession of visits into a series of intertwined narratives.

And while Tina was going on about how delightful had been the Princess of This, or how spiteful the Duchess of That, she was tangentially illustrating Italian and European history.

During the First World War the older of Tina’s daughters, Norina, married a military man, General Antonino di Giorgio. During the 1920s di Giorgio became Minister for War in Mussolini’s government, although he does not seem to have been a committed fascist himself, and died before the outbreak of the Second World War.

The End of the Dynasty

Pip died in 1936, and the now-elderly Tina, cared for by her two daughters, found herself in a precarious position as war approached, given her British nationality. Despite Tina’s late son-in-law having been a minister in one of Mussolini’s governments, several relations and family friends were associated with the anti-fascist side, and there are stories of arrests and people living in great anxiety. The three moved between Sicily and Rome for a while, but saw out the last couple of years of the war in Rome. Tina’s papers record tumultuous events around the fall of Mussolini, the oppression of the German occupation, and the privations of the late wartime period for the population of Rome.

Tina died in 1957, Norina having predeceased her in 1954. Delia, the other daughter, lived on until 1971, long enough to be interviewed by Trevelyan as he researched the book. She died just as it was published. Their magnificent home, the Villa Malfitana, avoided the fate of many grand mansions in Palermo, being neither destroyed by allied bombs nor allowed to fall into ruins and be converted into slums through Mafia corruption. I regret that I have not photographed it myself, but here is a photograph from Wikipedia:

Villa Malfitana (Wikimedia Commons – click to enlarge)

After Delia’s death the family wealth went into the creation of the Joseph Whitaker Foundation (Fondazione Giuseppe Whitaker), preserving the Villa Malfitana and also the results of Pip’s Phoenician excavations at Motya. You can visit the English-language version of the foundation’s website here, with some photographs of the interior of the villa. It is well worth visiting the website to see the extraordinary luxury in which the Whitakers must have lived. Note that the Giuseppe Whitaker talked about in the text of the website was in fact Pip, not Joseph Whitaker senior.

April 26, 2020November 19, 2023

Taormina – In the Shadow of the Volcano

Taormina sits on its craggy outcrop looking out over the Strait of Messina, in the shadow of Mount Etna, with implausibly beautiful views. The food there is good too.

This is the final post based on material from a tour of Sicily a few years ago, at least until we are able to return. This post will be a bit more of a travelogue and a bit less didactic than some of my recent posts. You can find the earlier instalments here:

We had been basing ourselves near the town of Ragusa – one of several Baroque gems in southeast Sicily and in the heart of Montalbano country. Apart from our return to Palermo and its terrifying traffic, our last stop was to be Taormina on the east coast.

The drive to Taormina was pretty easy. We took a main road northeast from Ragusa until we hit the east coast near Catania, and then took the coastal motorway north. And from about halfway into the trip, Etna was there, first dominating the horizon to our north, then a huge presence on our left as we headed up the coast. The atmospheric conditions around the top change constantly – one moment it will be covered in cloud, and ten minutes later it will be clear. But even at its clearest there is always a plume of smoke and vapour around the crater.

We had a 2pm rendezvous arranged with the parents of the lady who owns the flat we would be renting for three days, and we arrived in Taormina at about 12.30, so with an hour and a half to kill we stopped for lunch at the first restaurant we saw after leaving the motorway. Not much on the menu was available at lunchtime in the off season, and what there was was only OK, but any shortcomings were amply compensated by the view. We were looking northeast up the coast and across the straits of Messina. It was sunny and clear enough to see the mountains of Calabria on the other side.

The Strait of Messina, with the mountains of Calabria on the other side, from the town of Castelmola near Taormina. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The rendezvous went fine. The front door of the flat opened straight onto a street (not even a front doorstep) and the street itself was too narrow for a sane Australian to attempt to park. But I’d been in Italy long enough by then to know what to do – park as close as possible to the wall on the opposite side, put the hazard flashers on and let the traffic find its way around me as best it might while I unloaded the car.

Then the proper thing to do would have been to drive to the multi-storey municipal paid car park from which it would have been a twenty-minute walk back up innumerable steep flights of steps. Everywhere else is strictly residents parking only. Of course no right-thinking southern Italian would pay for parking if an alternative were available, and I sought our landlady’s dad’s advice. He recommended a piazza about five minutes walk away where they always parked (they were from out of town themselves) and where he claimed they never got booked. Time would tell whether this applied to us but after 24 hours of a guilty Anglo-Saxon conscience I had yet to be booked, clamped or towed away. I was encouraged by the memory of the time near Amalfi where on the recommendation of our landlord I parked for a week in a two-hour car park without any problems. There is no substitute for local knowledge.

After settling in we headed down into the main part of town. Taormina (ancient Greek Tauromenion) being of Greek origin is of course on top of a steep hill, in this case jutting out from the steeper slopes that come down from the mountains to the sea along here. Apparently this particular hill is composed of especially solid rock, which is why despite so many centuries of seismological and vulcanological excitement there are still Greek, Roman and medieval buildings, including a particularly fine amphitheatre which we were yet to visit. From Taormina’s crag, you can look south down the coast towards Catania, and immediately below you is a picture-perfect horseshoe-shaped bay in which is a pretty island called appropriately if unimaginatively Isola Bella (Pretty Island).

Isola Bella, Taormina. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film. Two images stitched in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

Being for much of the early 20th Century both spectacularly beautiful and cheap, Taormina housed a succession of northern European artists, bohemians and pederasts escaping creditors and the authorities back at home, and soaking up the sun, wine and local youth. One German minor aristocrat specialised in taking photographs of the local shepherd boys in “classical” poses that would get him arrested today. But such is the cult of even peripheral celebrity that you can buy editions of his photographs (sealed in plastic) in the souvenir shops, and the piazza in which I was illegally parked was named after him.

D.H. Lawrence wrote Sea and Sardinia here but then he also wrote Kangaroo near Wollongong so I’m not sure what that proves.

Being steep meant that for us to get down to the main drag we needed to go down a hundred or two stairs, or along a considerably longer road with a dozen switchback bends (and with no footpath). Once down there one was in no doubt that Taormina is a real tourist town. At least half the shops were open during the afternoon when no self-respecting Sicilian would go shopping. And what was on offer was mostly souvenirs, crafts, and local wine, sweets and gastronomia. The most expensive cafe in town with the best view (much appreciated by Winston Churchill, we are told) was called the Café Wunderbar and like any decent tourist town anywhere, there was a fake Irish pub. Blokes in fancy dress armed with mandolins and accordions would go up to those tourists who had unwisely chosen the tables nearest the street and play O Sole Mio non-stop until bribed to go away.

The main piazza in Taormina, with Cafe Wunderbar on the other side, and Etna in the distance. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fuji Fujinon-W 125mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Many of the tourists came from cruise ships docked in Catania. From about 9.30 in the morning till the last tour bus departed in the evening the main street was shoulder to shoulder with them, many in tour groups led by guides holding aloft their totems, often a half-opened umbrella. Indeed Lou and I were speculating that I should try half-opening my umbrella, holding it aloft, marching the length of the main street and seeing how many foreigners I had picked up along the way.

But as we have noted before, the thing about tourist traps is that they attract tourists for good reasons, the principal one being that they are in very beautiful places. Even one afternoon, as the weather deteriorated, some rain fell, thunder rolled and lightning played around the upper slopes of Etna, we were very happy sitting at our roadside cafe (in a side street where the risk of busker attack was lower). After a big plate of pasta each at lunch neither of us felt like a full meal and so in the evening we sat outside an enoteca and just had a glass of wine each and shared a plate of antipasto. By the time we were back up to the main street the passegiata was under way, when every Italian puts on nice clothes and wanders up and down the street chatting to friends. In places like Taormina they are joined by sunburnt Brits in shorts and sandals, loud Americans and Germans, Japanese (and increasingly Chinese) in expensively branded Italian stuff they have paid too much for, and of course us.

Just to make it all a bit more memorable, the Targa Florio classic car rally was in town that night, and the main street which is normally closed to traffic was periodically host to modern Ferraris driven by very rich Japanese living out their life’s fantasies, and a range of vintage sports cars including, to my delight, a number of Alfa Romeos from the 1950s and 60s.

The next day we spent in Taormina again. The weather was patchy for photography in the morning, and overcast in the afternoon and evening. Very early we went down to the municipal gardens which have a great view south to Etna and along the coast, but which are also very nice in their own right. The light was pretty transient but I only needed it to be good for 1/4 of a second at f.32 and I took a few large format shots. It turned out that the gardens were established by an aristocratic English lady who had been a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria but who got her marching orders after a dalliance with the Prince of Wales. She then decamped to Sicily, married a respectable local doctor, and laid out the public gardens, as one does in such circumstances.

Etna from the public gardens in Taormina. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fuji Fujinon-W 125mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

After that I hiked back up to the flat to divest myself of 25 kilos or so of camera gear while Lou stayed in town. I returned to meet up with Lou and we had a late roadside breakfast outside a pastry and sweet shop. We caught the cable car down to sea level and wandered along beside the coast where we had some excellent views of Isola Bella. On the way back we stopped at a bar overlooking the bay and had very nice granitas – lemon for me, mandarin for Lou. Back up in town again we decided that we would go home for lunch, and bought some prosciutto and bread in the little supermarket in the piazza of the German pederast where I was illegally parked (but still without retribution).

Next morning dawned fine and completely cloudless so we sprinted off back down into town, or at least made as rapid progress as one can with 25 kg of large format camera gear, in order to be at the entrance to the Greek theatre for when it opened at 8am. We were, it wasn’t. Which is to say that the advertised 8am opening time only applies in summer. In October it opens at 9. No matter, I headed back to the municipal gardens to retake the previous day’s photos in much better light. Eventually we made it back to the theatre, getting in with the first crowds of the morning but before the first tour buses arrived.

The so-called Greek theatre was actually extensively remodelled by the Romans, which the classier sort of guide book rather sniffs at, suggesting that this sort of modernisation is a terrible thing. Well, it may be, but actually the Roman bits didn’t look all that bad to our debased tastes and on a high headland, on a sunny morning, with Etna obligingly smoking away in the background it was great.

Taormina Teatro Greco — The Greek Theatre, Taormina. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon Nikkor-W 150mm lens, Kang Tai 6x17cm rollfilm back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

I got some good large format photos, although we had to deal with something that one tends to encounter in Italy – a couple of officials spotted that I was using a tripod and struggled up the steps of the theatre like worried cinema usherettes to tell us that this wasn’t allowed. I always observe bans on tripods when they are shown, but in this case there were no such signs. I suspect that there is actually a ban on professional photography without permits, and the officials assume that tripod means professional. Needless to say I had chosen a spot well away from anyone else so the tripod wasn’t impeding anyone.

Anyway, it took them a couple of minutes to struggle up to where we were, by which time I had taken all the photographs I wanted, and had largely finished packing up. The conversation went along these lines: Them: “professional photography isn’t allowed”. Me: “That’s OK then, I’m not a professional. This is my hobby.” Them: “It still isn’t allowed.” Lou: “Why?”. Them: “Because of the regulations.” Lou laughs. Them: “A camera by itself is OK, but not this thing – what’s it called?” Me: “In Italian it’s called a treppiedi. In English it’s called a tripod.” Them: “Ah, TRIPOD, thanks.” After which they left. It’s tiresome but people write to photography magazines about it all the time – petty officialdom everywhere equates tripods with professionals, and assumes it must not be allowed. Anyway, the outcome was that I got my photographs. I once had a conversation like that in Rome, where I actually triggered the shutter while talking to the policeman. He was asserting that tripods were a threat to public safety – I was suggesting that at 6am when he and I were the only ones in the piazza, the threat was probably manageable.

After our successful encounter with Sicilian bureaucracy we came back to the flat and headed to the car (still unbooked) for what we had planned to be a driving day, where we would go all the way around Etna. But first we thought we would follow our road all the way up to a village called Castelmola which is perched on a crag several hundred feet higher than Taormina. When we got there I had the agreeable experience of parking legally and then walking past the village policeman with a clear conscience. More importantly, when we emerged from the municipal car park we realised that we were in a very beautiful place, high up, on a clear sunny day, with spectacular views in every direction, not least to Etna to the south, but also with very clear views across the Strait of Messina to Reggio Calabria (the “toe” of Italy) on the other side.

Castelmola — Looking south towards Catania in the distance, from Castemola. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

So we decided to go no further. After spending some time at the castle at the very top of the mountain, we came back down to the village and found a bar with a rooftop terrace, with a view of – yes – Etna. The bar was run by a delightful old chap – I asked him for a glass of local white wine and it arrived in a large beer tankard which pretty much put paid to any residual idea that I might go for a long drive afterwards. For almost an hour we sat on the terrace, nursed our drinks and watched Etna.

Etna from Castelmola — Mount Etna from Castemola. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

It changes constantly. At first there was no cloud apart from the plume of smoke and vapour coming from the crater. Then as the day warmed up clouds would form downwind of the summit. They would build up and hide the summit. Then, just when we had decided that was it for the day, suddenly it would clear. But always there was the plume of smoke.

Mount Etna from Castemola. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens, 6x6cm film back, Fujichrome Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Then we went down the road a bit to a restaurant with a view of a certain large volcano, and where the lunch was adequate but the view was fantastic.

After our drink we came back down, parked the car illegally again, dropped the large format camera gear at the flat, then went down to the belvedere with my Hasselblad where I took a couple of shots of Isola Bella from a different angle. Then – via the internet bar where Lou had a raspberry granita with cream, and a shop which sold takeaway arancini in many varieties – back home to start packing for the trip to Palermo the next day.

September 21, 2019November 2, 2024

Piazza Armerina, Morgantina and Siracusa

Piazza Armerina

Ragusa is an excellent base from which to visit three very ancient sites – Piazza Armerina with its Roman villa, the ancient Greek city of Morgantina, and of course Siracusa (Syracuse).

From Ragusa we made a trip almost into the centre of Sicily to visit the town of Piazza Armerina. According to our guide book this town was settled by Lombard troops of the Norman King Roger II – according to other sources the Lombard settlers were brought in by King William II after the area was depopulated. Either way, the local population is supposedly therefore fairer in complexion than most Sicilians and speaks a distinct dialect. We didn’t see much evidence of this. I did see a bus full of fair-haired people speaking a distinct dialect but Lou suggested that they were more likely to be German tourists.

The interior of Sicily is the region of Latifundi – vast estates growing grain, worked in antiquity by slaves, then serfs, and later tenant farmers and landless labourers. Even though legally free, the farmers were kept in extreme poverty, which led to all sorts of social ills, not least the Mafia which by some accounts originated as a self-help system for those without any other means of redress against the power of the landowner and the state. Astonishingly, the Latifundia system operated continuously under the same name in Sicily and Calabria from Roman times until after the Second World War. When the estates were compulsorily acquired by the state for redistribution in the 1950s, the compensation paid to the owners was reportedly based – in a rare instance of official humour – on the productive value of the land nominated by those owners in their previous tax returns, which needless to say was not very much¹.

The effect of centuries of this system on the cultivated and settled landscape is clear – unlike elsewhere in Italy where every hill has a village or small town on top and scattered farmsteads in between, in central Sicily the population is concentrated in larger villages and towns, from which they had to walk long distances to work in the fields. Between the towns the landscape, planted with grain, looks as sparsely-populated as Kansas or southern New South Wales, if hillier than either.

Anyway, the reason we were here was to visit the ruin of a Roman villa. Not just any villa, but a very substantial one which may at one stage in its existence have been a country retreat for the Emperor Maximian, or perhaps just a wealthy noble landowner, but parts of which date variously from the 2nd to the 4th Centuries AD. Towards the end of the Roman period the archaeology shows evidence of the troubled times with the thickening of the external walls for defensive purposes, and partial destruction during the period of the Vandal invasion in the 5^th Century. After the Roman period it survived in increasing disrepair until it was covered by a mudslide in the early Middle Ages and not properly explored till the 1920s. Excavations are still in progress.

What makes it famous is the extraordinary mosaics. To the best of my knowledge there are none like these anywhere, not in Pompeii, not in Herculaneum, and it is not just the number of them, but the size and above all the workmanship. The closest thing we have seen is in Aquileia, right at the other end of the country. There are scenes of hunting, scenes of legionaries capturing exotic animals in Africa and shipping them to Rome, mythical scenes and – most famously – the soft-porn scenes of young ladies in bikinis taking part in various sports including what looks like beach volleyball. Whoever lived out in the sticks here could clearly afford to bring skilled craftsmen and expensive materials from a long way away.

The villa is famous for the number of its tourists so to beat the crowds we had set out quite early and got there not long after opening time – so early were we that most of the tents selling souvenirs were not even open. It is an archaeological excavation in progress so there is no guarantee what will be open but most of it seemed to be. We got round the site while very few other people were around but as we left the tour buses were starting to roll up, filled with the descendants of Roger’s troops, or perhaps Germans.

Morgantina

From Piazza Armerina we went to another ancient site – much older and far less crowded. It is a Greek city called Morgantina, dating from the 5th Century BC, but formerly a settlement of the pre-Greek Sicel people after whom Sicily is named. There’s not a lot left, but enough to work out where the centre of town was, and where the citizens met in the agora. The theatre is fairly well-preserved, and the bits of the theatre that weren’t preserved have been restored.

In the many wars during the period of Greek settlement Morgantina seems to have generally sided with, or been a vassal-state of, Syracuse (see below). In the Punic Wars Morgantina, like Syracuse, took the side of Carthage against Rome. It seems to have been abandoned by the First or Second Century AD. It was also the source of a grape variety from which a highly-regarded wine was made, and it would be nice to think that some of modern Sicily’s unusual grape varieties were its descendants.

Unlike the Roman villa at Piazza Armerina, which is in a small valley, Morgantina is on a mountain top. Presumably, given their proclivities for fighting each other, the Greeks chose such spots for defensibility, but it must be admitted that it gave them some tremendous views.

From Morgantina we headed to the nearby town of Aidone (on another mountain top) in search of lunch. Here we managed to demonstrate that it is actually possible to find a bad meal in Sicily. We followed signs to a restaurant which turned out to be in a small hotel. We stuck our heads in, didn’t see anyone and headed out again, when an old lady appeared, asking if we wanted to eat, smiling and beckoning. By that stage it would have been rude to demur, so we accepted, which we then had plenty of opportunity to regret. I’ll spare you the details, but when the meal eventually appeared it had mostly come out of jars and the cost was €40, which was exorbitant by local standards for what we got. Needless to say we ate alone.

Siracusa

The following day was another long-distance effort, when we got up early and drove to Siracusa. Yes, this is the Syracuse of antiquity, for a few hundred years an independent Greek city-state, home to Archimedes and the focus of stubborn if ultimately unsuccessful resistance to Rome during the Punic Wars.

The old city of Syracuse was on the island of Ortigia in the harbour – easily defended and the site of a copiously-flowing freshwater spring which still flows into the harbour today. It is called the fountain of Arethusa and needless to say there is a mythological story to explain it. Like most nymphs, it would seem, Arethusa was beset by the unwanted attentions of another god or demigod. In this case it was a river god, and when Arethusa turned herself into a spring to get away from him, he turned himself into a river and his waters mingled with hers, thus ensuring he got his wicked way with her after all. In hindsight the turning-into-a-spring strategy was probably flawed.

As a child, I read about Greek myths in Look and Learn magazine and illustrated encyclopaedias. To the extent that I thought about it at all I thought that the Greek myths took place in what we now think of as mainland Greece, Crete or the Aegean. But Sicily was then part of the Greek world and it seems that several mythological or heroic episodes were explicitly understood to have happened there. Persephone was kidnapped by Hades at a lake in central Sicily. The Cyclops, in particular Polyphemus who gave Odysseus such a hard time, lived on the east coast. Scylla and Charybdis (Odysseus again) were on either side of the strait of Messina. Perhaps Sicily had a place in the general Greek imagination a bit like the Wild West in the 19th Century – a real place, but far away enough to be exotic.

Back to the present. These days Siracusa is a pretty big town with a fair bit of industry on the outskirts but it has done well to protect the historic centre on the little island of Ortigia. The town was pretty badly bombed in 1943 but most of Ortigia survived. The Siracusan town authorities have done what the better-advised tourist towns in Italy have done: they have not only restricted traffic in the historic centre – easy enough – but they have built a large parking garage on the edge of Ortigia and run a free bus shuttle from it into the centre. According to the guide book the parking used to be free as well but in these tough times that couldn’t last. However to park there for a day will not cost you much.

Once in the centre of Ortigia we got our bearings and headed straight for the cathedral. In an Italian town or city the cathedral is almost always called the “duomo”, and there is almost always a Piazza Duomo in front of it and in that piazza there is almost always a Cafe Duomo. Lou has a theory that this will always be one of the better cafes in town, on the grounds that to have grabbed the name they will have had to be in existence for quite a long time. Anyway there is only one way to test this theory empirically so we had a coffee and a pastry each.

Thus fortified we headed into the duomo which is a quite extraordinary building. The façade facing the street is conventional baroque, but inside, or on the outer side wall, something much more complicated appears. Not only has there been a Greek temple, a Byzantine church, an Arab mosque and then a Catholic church on that spot since 480 BC or so, but elements of most of those are still present. In particular, the columns that supported the original temple of Athene are still incorporated into the walls. Also, as was the case with the duomo in Cefalù, some brave soul took the wise decision to strip off the rubbishy baroque accretions from the interior and as a result the church has regained much of its nobility. We thought it very good indeed.

After the duomo the next church we wanted to see wasn’t open so we walked around the edge of Ortigia then cut back into the middle and went into the church of Santa Lucia. This is supposedly on the site of the martyrdom of said saint, but the main attraction for us was the altarpiece which is a large painting of “The Burial of Santa Lucia” by Caravaggio, done in atonement for one of his many run-ins with the authorities.

After spending some time there we visited another Sicilian cultural icon – a museum of puppetry. Sicily has a long history of puppet theatres which provided entertainment to people who had no other alternatives, and these theatres, amazingly, survived well into the 20^th Century. As a result, when the inevitable revival came along, it wasn’t the resurrection of a culture that had completely died and which needed to be reconstructed from books, but the reinvigoration of something whose original exponents were still living.

The fascinating thing about these puppet theatres is how formulaic but historic the stories are. They are a mixture of historical characters (the Norman Count Roger defeating the Saracens, for example) and stories from Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” which in turn is derived somewhat loosely from the Song of Roland. So there are lots of knights, Saracens, giants, dragons, beautiful maidens, beautiful maidens disguised as knights, and so on.

Many of the same scenes were portrayed on the sides of the traditional brightly painted donkey carts which alas have now largely been replaced by little “Ape” two-stroke three-wheel trucks (but whose owners occasionally show a similar flair for decoration, happily).

Puppets with cart. HTC phone camera (click to enlarge).

Note¹: I can’t remember where I read this but if I manage to track down the reference I will update the post.

July 18, 2019March 29, 2024

Montalbano Country

This is a piece I had been working on in spare moments for future publication, but with the death of Andrea Camilleri yesterday, it seemed appropriate to complete and publish it, with more emphasis on “Il Commissario Montalbano” than I originally intended.

Ragusa Ibla. Hasselblad 501 C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film. Three shots, digitally merged in Photoshop (click to enlarge).

The southeastern corner of Sicily feels quite unlike the northwestern. There are a few reasons for this. The first thing you notice as you get into the area is that the roads are in much better condition, which I put down to healthier local government finances, but also less maintenance money lost to mafia corruption. Then there is the landscape. As you saw in my post on The Wild West of Sicily, in the northwest it is gaunt and spectacular. In the southeast it is softer, with rolling hills running down to the sea, cut by deep valleys. Drystone walls separate the fields, and large carob trees provide shade.

Countryside near Ragusa. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Fujinon 120mm lens, 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

But the biggest difference is the architecture. While the northwest is a glorious jumble of styles and ages, the southeast is curiously homogenous. Everything is baroque.

The reason is that in 1693 a huge earthquake destroyed pretty much everything in a lot of towns, and the subsequent rebuilding was necessarily in a similar style. What is more, the local sandstone is soft and easily carved, so the decorative tastes of the rococo era were easily indulged, even on relatively humble buildings. The effect of all this is anything but boring, and despite a general prejudice against Italian baroque architecture, I found it rather fetching.

Baroque architecture in the town of Noto. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Probably my main complaint about Italian baroque architecture is the number of times lovely medieval churches with historic artworks were tastelessly “modernised” after the Council of Trent, especially in the Papal States. In this part of Sicily, that charge of vandalism cannot be sustained, because the destruction wrought by the earthquake meant that there was very little left to preserve.

We were staying just outside a town called Ragusa, which we had chosen because it features in one of our favourite Italian television programs – “Il Commissario Montalbano” (Inspector Montalbano). This is based on the crime writing of the author Andrea Camilleri[1], and stars an actor called Luca Zingaretti. (Edit: at the time of writing, the current leader of the main centre-left political party, the PDI, was Zingaretti’s brother Nicola, who looks a lot like him, making political reports on the news a bit disconcerting.)

If you haven’t made the acquaintance of Commissario Montalbano on screen, I recommend it. The stories are good, the acting of the principal characters is excellent, and that of the minor characters (recruited from Sicilian amateur dramatic societies, we suspect) is engagingly hammy. The stories are set in the fictional town of Vigata, which, due to the magic of editing, is made up of the most scenic bits of Ragusa and half a dozen towns around it, with occasional visits elsewhere in Sicily. Many of the indoor scenes were apparently shot in Rome during the winter months. You can get DVDs with English subtitles, at least in Australia.

The town hall in Scicli – Montalbano’s police station in the early series. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The region has been understandably quick to cash in on the popularity of the TV show. You can buy tourist brochures with guides (or take guided tours) to the major locations, and when you get there, restaurants tend to have photos on the walls recording the time when a scene was filmed there, or the cast ate there.

Montalbano's House — “Montalbano’s house” in the real-life port of Punta Secca. Hasselblad 501 C/M camera, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

We were staying in an agriturismo between Ragusa and the coast, and when I mentioned our Montalbano enthusiasm to the proprietor he took me to see an old farm building on the property which had been used as a location. It is one of the more distant buildings in the picture below.

South of Ragusa — Looking down to the coast from south of Ragusa. Horseman 45FA large format camera, Nikon 150mm lens, 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

The country roads are rather narrow and winding here so photo opportunities tend to be dictated as much by whether it is possible to stop anywhere close as by what there is to see. Early one morning I was pottering about beside the road contemplating a picture of an old ruined farmhouse when a little old Fiat stopped beside me, and out got a little old Sicilian couple. They politely enquired whether I was hunting (it was hunting season and you occasionally heard shots in the mornings). My camera gear was still packed away so it could conceivably have been weapons of some kind. I replied that I was hunting for good photographs – it is never a wise thing to attempt jokes with an imperfect command of the language but on this occasion I appeared to have got away with it. It turned out that the old gentleman was the proprietor of the farm, and he and his wife had spotted me (or maybe a passing driver had tipped them off) and they had come out to see what I was up to, in case I was planning to hunt on their land, or even worse, might have been a tax inspector. I explained that I was an Australian tourist and my hobby was taking photographs. Once that was established, all was well.

Near Ragusa is a town called Modica, sitting in a deep valley spanned by a modern road bridge, which features in the opening credits of the show, as does the town’s cathedral. The main reason we went there, however, was to try its famous chocolate. But this is not just any old chocolate. This is chocolate as it was made hundreds of years ago when cocoa was first brought back from the new world. Sicily then was under Spanish rule so it is not particularly surprising that things that were happening in Spain also happened here. And it is a bit Sicilian too that once they started doing it they saw no reason to change anything.

So off we went to “L’Antica Dolceria Bonaiuto” which claims to be the oldest chocolate maker in Sicily, where in a lovely old shop they put out samples to taste. And what is it like? Well, nothing like Cadbury’s. It’s grainier – not quite like chocolate fudge but with something of that consistency. It comes in various flavours, including very chocolatey and extremely chocolatey, but also things like cinnamon, chili, orange, cardamom and salty. I liked the vanilla.

They also sell Sicilian cakes and pastries, and we decided that this was the place to try the fabled Sicilian cannoli. These are a sort of large cylindrical sweet pastry casing which can be filled with various things. Lou asked for chocolate cream, I decided to be traditional and stick with sweet ricotta. In the Antica Dolceria Bonaiuto, they don’t have the pastries out in a display case going soggy. Instead, you place your order, the lady behind the counter repeats it back into the kitchen, and they fill the cannoli cases there and then, dunking the ends in crushed pistachios. They were truly amazing. I have tried cannoli many times since, elsewhere in Italy and indeed in Australia, but never have I had any like these. There is a scene in the TV series where Montalbano is waiting to see the coroner and notices a tray of fresh cannoli that has just been delivered. Eventually he is unable to resist, steals one and eats it. If they came from Modica then I can forgive him.

The one place you don’t see featured in the Montalbano TV series is a place a bit further west called Porto Empedocle, which is a bit tough because it was Camilleri’s home town, on which he based the fictional town of Vigata. So Porto Empedocle has rather missed out on the Montalbano tourism boom. In a somewhat passive-aggressive gesture at being overlooked, the comune of Porto Empedocle erected a statue to commemorate Montalbano. Their imagined Montalbano looks nothing like Luca Zingaretti, and the rest of Italy seems to have ignored it.

[1] On the 17^th of June 2019, Camilleri, in his nineties, was admitted to hospital in Rome in a serious condition after a heart attack. Such is his popularity that it was headline news, with TV reporters doing live crosses from outside the hospital. He died a month later, on the 17^th of July 2019.

April 25, 2019July 28, 2024

Norman Sicily

There are all sorts of reasons – geo-political, cultural, artistic – why the brief period of Norman rule in Sicily should be better known than it is. There are not many histories of the subject in English, and by far the best is that by John Julius Norwich, originally published in two volumes (The Normans in the South 1016-1130 and The Kingdom in the Sun 1130-1194) and later as a single volume titled simply The Normans in Sicily. This is one of my favourite books and I would recommend it to anyone just for the quality of its writing, but it is an absolute necessity for anyone who wants to understand Italy in the 11^th and 12^th centuries.

Cover of “The Normans in Sicily” by John Julius Norwich. Penguin edition, 2004.

Lord Norwich’s writing is as elegant and engaging as always, but it is also an extraordinary story. How did one of the younger sons of a minor and impecunious family in Normandy, the de Hautevilles, found a dynasty that – almost a thousand years ago – synthesised French, Italian, Greek and Arab cultures into a sophisticated and tolerant regime? A dynasty that dictated terms to popes, built some of the most beautiful buildings anywhere, and which – through the female line – produced the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen, a polymath known as Stupor Mundi, the wonder of the world.

Well, Norwich takes two rather substantial volumes to tell the story, so I’m not going to do it in a blog post. But here’s a very quick sketch.

In the former Lombard duchy of Apulia (the modern Italian region of Puglia), temporarily re-absorbed into the Byzantine Empire, the Lombards were trying to take back control and sought the assistance of some Norman knights returning from the Holy Land. Word got around back in Normandy and one of the adventurers who appeared was Robert Guiscard (“the crafty”) de Hauteville who soon started carving out his own dukedom in the South of Italy. One of the Norman knights who joined Guiscard was his younger brother Roger.

Sicily was then under Arab rule and in due course Roger mounted an expedition to take control of the island. After several years of campaigning he succeeded. Roger only ever held the title of count but his son, Roger II, was recognised as King of Sicily by the Pope.

Rather than exterminate, exile or marginalise the Arabs and Greeks on the island, Roger I and Roger II allowed free exercise of religion and employed members of both communities, along with northern Europeans, in their governments.

Roger was followed by William the Bad (not really that bad) and William the Good (not really that good, but his reign was marked by peace). During the reigns of both Williams the most powerful courtier was a cleric whose name has come down in Sicilian history as “Gualtiero Offamiglia”, but that is an Italianisation of his real name, Walter of the Mill – he was an Englishman. You never know when knowing that fact will come in handy.

William II died without direct heirs, and the throne passed to his aunt, Constance, who had married Henry, the son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa (see post on Val d’Orcia). Constance’s son became Frederick II, on whom I will write a separate post one day. I’m still looking for a really good biography of Frederick II in English.

The Normans ruled the whole island in the end, but their major architectural legacy is in the northwest – places like Palermo, Monreale and Cefalù. I had assumed that this was because their power was centred on Palermo, but I suppose it could be possible that over the centuries earthquakes in the southeast have destroyed any Norman buildings that were there.

But what a legacy it is. The combination of huge Norman buildings with Byzantine and Arabic decoration is extraordinary and the visual demonstration of this syncretic culture is more eloquent than many thousands of words.

Cappella Palatina, Palermo. Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge)

And the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Yes, Byzantine mosaicists were better than their western European contemporaries in the 12^th Century, but in the giant images of Christos Pantocrator in Monreale and Cefalù they were not creating images in the formal, mystical and remote eastern tradition. They were working to a very different brief – showing the western preoccupation with the humanity of Christ, and they succeeded in a way that other European artists would not even begin to approach until Giotto came along two hundred years later, and perhaps not even then.

We started with the Palazzi di Normanni in Palermo, with its Cappella Palatina or palace chapel, then later visited the cathedral in Monreale, in the hills overlooking Palermo.

In the picture of Monreale below, you can see a portrait of King William the Good himself, presenting the church to the Virgin. Presumably this was done during his lifetime or shortly after. And what an exotic oriental monarch he looks! His great-grandfather was born in a small manor house in Normandy, but the figure here is far from the conventional image of a Norman thug in a chain-mail hauberk.

Later we visited Cefalù on the mid-north coast – built on the orders of Roger II to house his sarcophagus, but despite that his heir buried him in Palermo.

Cefalu' — Exterior of the cathedral in Cefalù , Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

Cefalù interior, Hasselblad 501C/M, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens, Fuji Velvia 50 film (click to enlarge).

There are two places in Palermo of which I wish I had photos to show you. One is a church called the Martorana, which was closed for restoration when we were there. The other is an absolute jewel box in the Palazzi Normanni called “King Roger II’s room”, which we did visit, but since I seem to be one of the only people in Italy (tourist or local) that obeys “no photography” signs, you’ll just have to visit it yourself. But here’s a hint – the illustrations on the cover of Norwich’s history, shown above, come from there.

Update: In July 2024 we revisited Palermo and I was delighted to find that the “no photography” rule in King Roger’s room no longer applied. You can find a post with photographs of it, and updated photographs of other places mentioned above, here: A Return to Palermo.

March 28, 2019April 8, 2024

The Wild West of Sicily

Sicily has a “Wild West”, or at least it seems like it.

The landscape – especially in the nature reserve of Lo Zingaro and the north-west corner of the island around the fishing port of San Vito Lo Capo – is dry and desert-like, with some spectacular scenery. There are places where it would not feel all that surprising to see Terence Hill and Bud Spencer¹ride over the hill to the accompaniment of an Ennio Morricone score.

The light is harsher, the colours are brighter and it has an edgier feel than does the softer, more pastel-coloured southeast.

And of course, there is the Mafia, the malevolent roots of which penetrate more deeply here, it is said, than elsewhere in Sicily, especially in towns like Trapani.

But – and here the Wild West comparisons are best set aside – it has layer upon glorious layer of history going back to the remotest antiquity, which causes the classier sort of travel writer (ahem) to use words like “palimpsest”. Here you will find remnants of Ancient Greek, Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman and Arab, and that short-lived but wonderful hybrid of Arab, Byzantine and Norman cultures that emerged during the reign of the Hautevilles in the 12^th Century. Much less of this survives in the east and south-east of Sicily, due I suppose to earthquakes.

I described our arrival in Sicily and settling in to our accommodation near Castellammare del Golfo in “Il Miracolo di San Bagagio“.

San Vito Lo Capo

Next day, we set out from Castellammare and headed for San Vito Lo Capo. There is no direct road from Castellammare to San Vito – such a route was once mooted but would have gone through the nature reserve of Lo Zingaro and, despite being backed by companies with reputed Mafia connections, it was defeated by a local popular movement, which was a pretty big deal under the circumstances. So we headed across the peninsula to Trapani, whence we headed up the coast. There was still a howling hot wind coming in from Africa a short way to the west, and after a long hot summer the country was very stark and desert-like – a bit like Central Australia, only with steeper mountains and bright blue sea.

Looking NW from Erice — Looking Northwest from Erice towards Monte Cofano and San Vito lo Capo in the distance. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Zeiss Sonnar 250mm lens (click to enlarge)

Why were we going there? We had established that this would be the weekend of a sagra or food festival. These are held all over Italy and generally celebrate the local speciality. In the case of San Vito lo Capo their local speciality is couscous – obviously it is a dish of North African origin, but here you are closer to Tunis than you are to Rome or even Naples, and the Sicilians have absorbed it into their own cooking traditions along with much else from the Arab world. And rather than a simple sagra, this had built itself up as a big multicultural festival and rather than simply “la sagra del couscous” it goes by the rather grandiose name of “Couscousfest”. There were two reasons why we were going. One was that we had had opportunities to go to sagre before but chickened out. The second was that our landlord had been very keen that we should and neither of us would have been game to admit that we hadn’t.

San Vito lo Capo was heaving with people, it was dreadfully hot and we had to park a kilometre or so away and walk. We finally got into town and worked out what we had to do – buy a ticket which entitled us, at one of three locations, to a bowl of couscous, a glass of local wine and a typical Sicilian sweet (while stocks lasted).

When we got to one of the venues, in a series of brightly-decorated tents set up on the beach, I decided that I liked the sound of one of the couscous on offer, and asked the person serving for some. She wasn’t sure who was serving that one, but was pretty sure it wasn’t hers, and directed me down the line. The same happened twice more until I got to the end of the line, where I was directed back to the first bowl. There was a different person serving there now, and he was certain that what he had was what I wanted, and served me some. It wasn’t. Still, it was a fish couscous which was quite representative of local cuisine, and Lou and I swopped. I ended up with Busiate alla Trapanese which is a local pasta in a local sauce which I had been intending to try, and it turned out to be delicious, so all was well. Trapanese sauce is olive oil, tomatoes, basil, garlic, pepper and parmesan.

As we left San Vito it was still desperately hot, with the tents drumming and flapping under the onslaught of the scirocco, but mercifully, that night the scirocco eased, and was replaced by weather which was still pleasantly warm, but which could surprise you with the occasional sudden thunderstorm.

Segesta

Not far from Castellammare is a place called Segesta, with a very fine Greek temple and amphitheatre. During the great period of Greek colonisation around 500 BC, Greek city-states were established along the east and south coasts of Sicily. The Carthaginians settled the west coast. Although Segesta isn’t on any of these coasts it marks the furthest extent of Greek culture in Sicily. The Greek cities showed no sense of ethnic solidarity, and fought some extraordinarily vicious wars among themselves.

We paid an initial visit to Segesta one afternoon when there were a few tourist buses in the car park, and it took a bit of artful composing to get pictures that did not include their passengers.

Segesta Amphitheatre — The amphitheatre at Segesta, with interesting meteorology in the distance. Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Zeiss Planar 80mm lens (click to enlarge)

We have noticed that while the Romans built their towns down in the valleys, around here the Greeks often built theirs on hilltops. Doubtless this was as a result of their perennial warfare, but it does make for some spectacular views. From the amphitheatre we could see the weather changing constantly around us – there was a warm moist wind from the west and on the lee side of a mountain a boiling mass of dark cloud was continuously forming.

Despite the crowds it was an opportunity to scout for further photographs and with the aid of a compass I established that there would be a good chance of the temple being illuminated by the rising sun, and that there was a dirt road at a suitable distance where I would be able to set up my large format camera.

A couple of days later, therefore, I got up very early and drove back to Segesta. The satnav suggested a shorter back way to get there – but I should have known not to trust it. The Italy maps don’t seem to distinguish between good metalled roads and tiny goat tracks and one must be ever on the alert for attempts to send you down the latter. Which it did, on this occasion, and before long I was making slow and very tentative progress along a “road” of a type that was almost certainly not covered in my car rental contract. Every now and then I would pass an early-rising local who would watch in amazement, presumably wondering when James May and Richard Hammond would appear.

Eventually I emerged at Segesta, found my pre-chosen spot, and set up the tripod and the camera while waiting for sunrise. A couple of farm dogs came bounding up barking furiously, but when they saw I had a large format camera they sat down and watched proceedings quietly and with interest. I often notice that a large format camera has this effect. It was a bit cloudy to the west, but the sun found a gap to shine through which illuminated the temple.

History of Sicily - Segesta Temple — The temple at Segesta. Horseman 45FA large format camera with 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Fujinon 120mm lens (click to enlarge)

In the history of Sicily, the Ancient Greek colonies of Southern Italy (“Magna Graecia”) had some genuine cultural glories – they were part of the broader Hellenic intellectual world, and being provinces did not necessarily make them “provincial”. Even quite recently art works of considerable sophistication have been found, fished up in nets from the sea bed.

That history, however, is also replete with tyrannical rulers, wars, acts of treachery and appalling cruelty. Behind the temple of Segesta is a deep ravine. When Segesta was sacked by the tyrant Agathocles of Syracuse, a reported 8,000 of the inhabitants of the town were killed by being thrown into the ravine. Segesta came under Carthaginian protection, but during the Punic Wars it treacherously murdered the Carthaginian garrison and changed allegiance to Rome. The price for Sicily of the Pax Romana was that it declined into an agricultural backwater.

I was going to make this a combined post on both the Ancient Greeks and the Normans in Sicily but there is far too much to say about the Normans, so will write on them separately in due course.

edit: I have now done so and you can find the post here.

Note¹: Terence Hill and Bud Spencer appeared in a number of so-called “Spaghetti Westerns” in the 1960s and 70s. Their real names are Mario Girotti and Carlo Pedersoli, respectively.

Recommended further reading on the History of Sicily: Blue Guide Sicily, edited by Michael Metcalfe, Sicily, Three Thousand Years of Human History by Sandra Benjamin, and Sicily, A Short History from the Ancient Greeks to Cosa Nostra, by John Julius Norwich.

February 22, 2019November 19, 2023

Il Miracolo di San Bagagio

Approaching northern Sicily by air is spectacular. No photographs or TV programs about travel in Sicily will prepare you for the landscape of big rugged mountains right beside very blue sea.

At Palermo airport there was the usual Italian muddle, where it took about three quarters of an hour for our bags to appear. There were a lot of teenage girls waiting for their bags and the warning buzzers kept sounding on alternate belts, whereupon the girls would all shriek and run to that belt. While they shrieked and ran I just stayed put by the original one and eventually the miracle of the baggage occurred. Having had a couple of bad but not catastrophic luggage experiences in Italian airports, we always regard it as slightly miraculous when the bags do arrive. We have taken to calling it Il Miracolo di San Bagagio.

After finding our way to the off-airport car hire depot, we drove west for about forty minutes along the coast to the town of Castellammare del Golfo, where we met our host, whom I shall call Candido (I don’t have his permission to use his real name, and I wouldn’t want to annoy him; being Sicilian he might have influential friends).

Candido was actually charming and urbane, and while we were getting shown around the house I asked him where the nearest supermarket was. He not only gave me detailed instructions on how to get there but rang the owner to see if it was open, because he had “two Australian tourists who needed supplies”. The owner – one Franco – apparently replied that he was closed and having his lunch but that he would reopen at 4pm. This did not surprise us as outside big cities (and even in them, to an extent) Italian businesses tend to close in the middle of the day so the owners and employees can go home for lunch.

So we did a bit of unpacking then when 4pm came we headed out. We weren’t too surprised to find that at about a quarter past four the supermarket wasn’t yet open, because we were pretty sure that the owner would be running on Sicilian time, so we went for a bit of a drive in the immediate area which has a famous scenic attraction in the form of a disused Tuna factory (yes, really) in a village called Scopello. The Mediterranean tuna stocks are almost all fished out now, by Spanish and even Japanese fishing fleets, but until the 1960s the migrating tuna would be caught off western Sicily by blokes in small boats. The tuna factories are now mostly ruins, or like this one have been converted into picturesque restaurants and B&Bs.

Scopello – Horseman 45FA large format camera with 4×5 inch sheet film back, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Fujinon-W 125mm lens (click to enlarge)

On return we found the supermarket open. It was a pretty small place with the sort of limited stock that you would find in an Australian holiday resort, except that it had quite a good bottle shop stocked with obscure (to me) local wines and a delicatessen filled with most interesting things. Apart from various essentials we also bought some olives and some magnificent pecorino stagionato (aged sheeps’ milk cheese). As we queued at the checkout the proprietor was quizzing the two German (or Dutch or Danish) girls in front of us about whether they had far to travel in the heat with their cold goods and whether they needed an insulated bag. They spoke no Italian and he spoke nothing else so there was no mutual comprehension going on, and I stepped in and translated into English for them.

I’m not sure I helped much but that formed a bit of a bond with the proprietor, and so I said in Italian “excuse me, are you Signor Franco?”. Yes, he said, cautiously. I explained that we were staying with Candido. Light dawned. “Candido, yes, he telephoned.” More light. “AAAH! AUSTRALIANI!” he bellowed. There was a brief shocked silence in the supermarket, as heads turned. It turned out that Franco has an uncle in Sydney. Or possibly four uncles, we were having a bit of trouble following him at that point. Anyway, on the strength of that indissoluble link between us he suddenly ducked off as we packed our groceries, and reappeared with a bottle of fortified white wine which he pressed on us as his welcoming gift. Sicily is that sort of place, we think. We tried the wine later and it was an excellent dessert wine, a bit like an Australian liqueur muscat but lighter.

We were closer to North Africa than to the Italian mainland, and that fact was clearly shown that night when the Scirocco started blowing. That is the hot wind from the Sahara, and it is very hot, and it is a very strong wind. It fairly whistled round the eaves all night. I don’t think it got much below 35 degrees all night.

The next day we visited Castellammare. The town itself is built around a pretty little port of considerable antiquity. The fort on the headland is originally Arab, with Norman accretions, but doubtless there would have been something there before the Arabs arrived.

Castellammare del Golfo – Hasselblad 501C/M camera, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Zeiss 80mm Planar lens (click to enlarge)

Castellammare del Golfo in the evening – Horseman 45FA large format camera with 6x12cm rollfilm back, Fuji Velvia 50 film, Fujinon-W 125mm lens (click to enlarge)

We ate a memorable meal – not very expensive, and for me at least, the second most enjoyable dish I have ever eaten in Italy (the best was an octopus stew in a coastal trattoria south of Otranto). “Spaghetti in Sicilian sauce” may not sound like much, especially when Sicilian sauce turns out to be just tomatoes, garlic, parsley, olive oil, roasted almonds, pepper and salt, but it was intensely flavoured and really delicious. Lou had a very typical Sicilian dish – Busiate (a kind of curly pasta) con Sarde e Finnocchi – pasta with sardines, wild fennel, pine nuts, currants and tomato. The currants are very much an Arab influence.

Tag: Sicily

A Return to Palermo

The Photography

Cefalù

Monreale

The Benedictine Cloisters

The Cappella Palatina

The Sala di Ruggero

The Cathedral

The End of the Hautevilles

Like this:

Princes Under the Volcano

English Merchants in Sicily

Enter Benjamin Ingham

The British Connection

Garibaldi and “The Thousand”

Caterina (Tina) Whitaker, née Scalia

Return to Sicily

The End of the Dynasty

Like this:

Taormina – In the Shadow of the Volcano

Like this:

Piazza Armerina, Morgantina and Siracusa

Piazza Armerina

Morgantina

Siracusa

Like this:

Montalbano Country

Like this:

Norman Sicily

Like this:

The Wild West of Sicily

San Vito Lo Capo

Segesta

Like this:

Il Miracolo di San Bagagio

Like this:

The Photography

Cefalù

Monreale

The Benedictine Cloisters

The Cappella Palatina

The Sala di Ruggero

The Cathedral

The End of the Hautevilles

Share this:

Like this:

English Merchants in Sicily

Enter Benjamin Ingham

The British Connection

Garibaldi and “The Thousand”

Caterina (Tina) Whitaker, née Scalia

Return to Sicily

The End of the Dynasty

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Piazza Armerina

Morgantina

Siracusa

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

San Vito Lo Capo

Segesta

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: