In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 5 – It's Italy, But Not As We Know It

 

© Nigel Summerley

Imagine being able to walk through a door in Italy and find yourself in Greece... For me, a lover of both, it sounds like a win-win.

And it's possible to do it (sort of) in the northern Sicilian town of Piana degli Albanesi.

Enter the church of San Giorgio and you are confronted with the starkly beautiful frescos (pictured above) and icons (below) of the Orthodox church, a world away from the often over-the-top decor of Italian Catholicism.

The reason for this anomaly is that Albanian refugees from the Ottoman Empire settled in this area from the 15th century onwards, bringing with them and preserving the Byzantine rites.

Because of this, the settlement was long known as Piana dei Greci, the name only being changed to Piana degli Albanesi in 1941 by Mussolini.

The Albanesi kept not only their religious practices but also their customs and language – which all help make the town a rare and fascinating experience. It's half an hour's drive south of Palermo but very much set in another time and place.

© Nigel Summerley

In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 4 – Market Forces

©Nigel Summerley

Palermo's La Vucciria market has changed a lot since Renato Guttuso painted his genuinely iconic picture of it [see this blog – An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Midnight in Sicily, 7 March 2021].

That image – probably not Guttuso's best but certainly his best known – crops up all over Vucciria. 

Everywhere you go, you will get a different story about the painting and what it represents. According to some, the artist put himself in it – some say as a young man, some say as an old man. They also say he included images of his wife and his mistress. But no one seems to know for sure whom those enigmatic figures represent...

The original is there for you to contemplate and draw your own conclusions at the Palazzo Chiaramonte, aka the Steri.

What is not in doubt is that Guttuso depicted a stunning cornucopia of foodstuffs for sale. But today the market has become a tourist magnet, with T-shirts, souvenirs and handbags taking the place of fish, fruit and vegetables.

And if you walk through the area at night, you will find yet another Vucciria: a dark, pulsating party alive with dancing, music, drinking and human noise, as if the place has entered another, wilder universe.

If Guttuso were to paint this contemporary nocturnal Vucciria, it would be very, very different from his original – but definitely just as sensual.

In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 3 – Bella... Bellissima

©Nigel Summerley

There seems to be something particularly grand about grandeur when it's a little faded, a little eccentric.

Hence, the appeal of La Bella Palermo, a palazzo property in Sicily's capital doubling as both a holiday let and a kind of living museum.

The place is lovingly curated by Francesco Cazzaniga, nephew of the owner – who is a collector of objets d'art both weird and wonderful.

With its five bedrooms and vast living areas, La Bella Palermo can be rented only by large families or groups – or couples or individuals who have a lot of money and want some palatial space to themselves.

Every day and night staying here offers up new discoveries. The rooms are so packed with paintings, books and upmarket bric-a brac, that there really never is a dull moment.

And apart from pretending that you're in The Leopard [see this blog – An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – The Leopard, 15 March 2021], you are right in the beating heart of Palermo, a few paces from seductive little streets and the Vucciria market [see this blog – An Odyssey in the Second Year of the Plague – Midnight in Sicily, 7 March 2021].

La Bella Palermo is part of the Palazzo Pantelleria; originally a 14th-century fort, it was transformed into a palace in the 16th century.

More information: https://www.labellapalermo.com/

©Nigel Summerley

©Nigel Summerley

In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 2 – The Height Of Good Taste

©Nigel Summerley

One of Palermo's gastronomic high spots – and it has many – is the DoBa restaurant, named after its founder and food maestro Domenico Basile.

OK, it's pricey. OK, it has a tendency to serve what long ago used to be nouvelle – ie, plates with not a lot to eat on them. But what you do get is of the highest quality and surprisingly (to me, someone who enjoys a full meal) satisfying.

However, apart from the incredibly attentive Domenico himself, DoBa serves up one unbeatable thing... the view from its rooftop terrace down over the Piazza Giuseppe Verdi to the Teatro Massimo opera house.

With that dramatic sight to take in, you would probably be happy to have a glass of house red and a packet of crisps.

So, yes, go to DoBa by all means, but insist on a table at the top of the building. Otherwise you're going to be starved of the ultimate dining pleasure.

https://www.dobarestaurant.it/

The Teatro Massimo seen from the DoBa rooftop                                                 ©Nigel Summerley

In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 1 – Dead Heat

 

This blog has covered Naples extensively – in the two series See Naples and Live and See Naples and Live More – but it hasn't touched on the fact that for the first six decades of the 19th century the city was the capital of what was known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

The two Sicilies – the whole of southern Italy and the island of Sicily – constituted a kingdom under the rule of the Spanish Bourbon royal family until the unification of Italy.

That unification was a forced marriage of northern Italy and the south which remains a strained relationship even today.

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies – the south and Sicily – still feels like a different country to that of Rome and Milan.

After spending time in Naples, one can't help finding Palermo to be something of a tribute act to that greater city. Palermo has the churches, the art, the markets, the food, the narrow back alleys, the history of mafia wars and bodies in the streets, and the juxtapositions of light and dark, of life and death... but somehow it doesn't come close to the edginess and perversity of Naples.

However, there's one Napolitan-style aspect in which Palermo can chalk up at least a draw: Naples has catacombs and cadavers aplenty (see this blog See Naples and Live) but the catacombs of the Capuchins in Palermo are a genuinely stunning near-death experience for the visitor.

It all started with the Capuchin monks preserving their fellows' bodies, but in the 19th century it became a fashionable thing to do to have you and your family put on show rather than buried.

Hundreds and hundreds of skeletons hang here in row upon row, many still dressed in their best clothes. In some cases, the clothes have worn much better than their occupants – the material of a dress still has its colour, the fabric still holds together...

The inescapable message is that death comes for all of us... it's the ultimate levelling up. Or maybe that should be levelling down.

They are all here: men, women, old, young... little toddlers in their toddler clothes. Nameless but every one the remainder of a life just like yours or mine or Biden's or Trump's...

Many were plague victims, so sometimes you will be confronted by whole families of skeletons with father, mother and children – all dressed for life but now long dead.

It's unmissable and only €5 to enter. Although I'm not sure what to think about the fact it's free for under-sixes. We all need to face up to death – but maybe that's just a tad too early to be forced to do it?

The Circle Of Non-Life

 

Image courtesy of Zoha Noor

I've just been editing an article to go up on a website that I work for. It didn't seem to be quite in the writer's usual style and was sprinkled with American spellings.

"Did you write this?" I asked her.

The answer was that because she had been unable to do the interview direct, she had sent the interviewee a list of questions and he had then sent back the answers "but he had put them through some sort of AI".

That explained why something felt not right to me. This man's words were somehow spirited but simultaneously seemed to lack any real spirit. I got rid of the verbiage and unnecessary adjectives and, hopefully, made the whole thing read better.

Coincidentally, I've recently noticed that this blog has had some huge spikes in readership: hundreds upon hundreds of views have been recorded in Hong Kong, Singapore and China. As it seemed unlikely that I suddenly had a huge following in the Far East, I checked with a tech-savvy human who informed me that they were all probably bots – looking for material that they could plagiarise.

Is this the way the world ends? Not Terminator-style, but with AI robots reading endless material written by AI robots?

See Naples and Live... More – 10: Life and Death – On Stage and Off

 

   Photo©Nigel Summerley

A major claim to fame of Naples' splendid opera house, the Teatro San Carlo, is that it burnt down in 1816 and was rebuilt even more splendidly within ten months. It is also reckoned to be the finest opera house in Italy... so let's say the world.

Initially I'd thought of just visiting the building to see its marvellous interior – which one can do. But when I found that Madama Butterfly was being staged, I booked tickets and had the view from a box seen here.

Like Puccini's opera, it was a bitter-sweet experience. Just as the lights were going down and the curtain was about to go up, I saw, as I was silencing my phone, a text from a musician friend telling me that my musical mentor and drumming legend, John Marshall, had just died.

Although the news was not totally unexpected, it was a tearful moment and I felt a kind of guilt for being here in this dream setting. But in an instant I could hear John's voice telling me: "Just enjoy the music – it's the best thing there is."

And it was. 

An incredibly moving night that brought the curtain down on yet another life-packed visit to Napoli...

   Photo©Nigel Summerley