Palermo, world city of culture

the four corners of a vibrant pedestrian mall

Guidebooks are filled with superlatives where Sicily is concerned, and this goes double for Palermo. Mostly they're accurate.

Sicily is the largest island in Italy and the Mediterranean (slightly larger than Sardinia) and the third largest in Europe (nope).

Palermo is the most conquered city in the world. Related: Palermo has the best street food in Italy.

So, food is Sicily is extraordinary even by Italian standards. They invented granita; we tend to think of it as related to espresso, but the roots are the same as pomegranate, which incidentally are huge and grown here.

Cannoli is Sicilian. So are caponata and arancini.

Every glass of table wine has been a knockout. The cookies are the cookies you dream about. I mean, if you don't, you should. They are rich in almonds and pistachios.

Civilization in Sicily is also really old, especially by North American standards. Like 800 BC old. I stopped by a pretty church: something has been there since 1100 AD. Marble fountain filled with lifelike statues? 1500.

Not everything is perfectly restored, but that's part of the charm. You could ignore the anti-gentrification graffiti and pick up a palazzo.

Everyone was here: the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs. Yesterday, when all the shops were closed for natale, Indian merchants opened their doors.

Tonight's kebab pizza (yes, really) was made by Tunisian Muslims. The crust was a lot better than that soft Neapolitan stuff.

I am curious why Mt Etna's eruptions have gotten so much coverage at home. Palermo is less than 100 miles away. Skies are blue as can be. Catania's airport, very close to Etna, and where I'll be flying back from, has resumed normal operations. Still, here's a shot from the Space Station. I hope I'll be able to see the lava flow at night from Catania or Taormina.

People use the same words to describe Palermo that they do Naples: gritty, chaotic, earthy. Maybe it's because the city was deserted for Christmas, but I just don't see it. Tonight was the first night locals returned en masse.

Maybe it's good I went to Napoli first. Or the weather's just better here. Both Napoli and Palermo lived under the iron fists of fascists and then the Mafia for generations.

But Palermo seems to be in the middle of a renaissance. In fact they declared this past year an official city of culture.

So what did I do for 3 days? Not much. A lot was closed for Christmas, and I hadn't realized my loft was not exactly downtown. I did wander into a few churches that were open.

There was a service going on, so I didn't want to be obtrusive.

Jesus and the apostles aren't as fair skinned as they are in Rome.

One of the few things open on Christmas besides churches was a digital Modigliani exhibit. A digital what?

I had mixed feelings about this concept, which basically involved projecting digitally retouched images of Amadei Modigliani's paintings in a dark room. You could do this online without going to Palermo. Only one or two actual paintings were there, and they were minor works.

His first and only solo exhibit caused a scandal because of nude women with pubic hair. 

Most of the biographical film was about his premature death from poverty, hunger, and tuberculosis and the even more tragic death of his young partner Jeanne, pregnant with their second child, by suicide days after his.

There was also a fun virtual headset art thing, where you got to explore the world's beyond Vermeer and Van Gogh and DaVinci paintings; all good until you tried to get up and everything was spinning.

Back out in the sunshine...

Don't forget to look up.

Notable: Palermo has lots of free, fast public wifi on the pedestrian mall. This is a boon to tourists. No funky log on or cookie warnings in Italian or email you need to provide to be spammed. It just works.

I found this fun globe, which reminded me of the Bean in Millenium Park in Chicago. It turned out to be an exhibit by Tomas Saraceno, who had that crazy room with the spider webs and mirrors that Joanie and Carol and Tom and I loved at SF MoMA.

The globe was part of an Urban Forest exhibition at a museum of contemporary art, and I happily spent a few hours admiring works by Ai Wei Wei and Berkeley's own Bill Fontana and several Sicilian artists I hadn't heard of until today.

 

Ai Wei Wei's tree is actually assembled from multiple other trees. It has visible screws holding it together.

I loved this room with the nightmare forest.

The giant rotating flowers were great too, like a Disneyland acid trip.

Palermo has a cathedral that clearly shows its location at the crossroads of Christianity and Arab cultures. Unfortunately it's much less interesting inside.

The details are reminiscent of the gorgeous cathedral in Sevilla.

Last stop: the epitome of culture. Il Massimo, Palermo's legendary opera house.

The dome can actually be opened!

Our tour was in English for me and in Italian for everyone else. It was fun to see the view from the boxes. Although the opera house is the third largest in Europe, it doesn't have that many seats. But the stage is huge and deep, 50 meters deep. (San Francisco Opera has almost twice as many seats.)

Massimo's acoustics are notable. No microphones required. We also visited this echo chamber, formerly a gentleman's smoking room. The murals are inspired by Pompeii.

When we emerged from Il Massimo at night, even more people had gathered to celebrate on the steps. Imagine Americans taking selfies with their little dogs at the opera house the day after Christmas!

It was quite a gift to behold.

Tomorrow: heading south to the best preserved Greek ruins outside of Greece.

the night before

 

"And the stockings were hung from the chimney with care..."

Suddenly it all made sense. I've been traveling for 9 days in a rollaboard, and was down to basically all filthy, smelly laundry. The humidity didn't help. But I knew my lodging in Palermo had a washer.

First I had to get to Sicily. I flew Volotea, a discount airline, from Napoli, which has a very nice modern airport where you can load up on panettone or burrata or pasta. They also have marble statues, like this portrait of Urania, astronomy goddess, carved in the 1st century.

The flight was half an hour late, because every seat was taken and everyone had a giant panettone or two. But it only took 35 minutes, so we were basically on time.

And Sicily, even on first glance, is breathtaking. Huge mountains. Bright sunshine. Really friendly people. There's a slick new train from the airport to downtown too.

Later I heard that Mt Etna was erupting, disrupting flights to Catania airport. But as far as I know, the morning Volotea flight went out.

I walked to the pizzeria and picked up the keys. Annika, who owns this apartment and the restaurant with her Sicilian husband, is back in Sweden, visiting her parents for the holidays. But she'd said was fine to do a load of wash. So I stripped down and threw everything—everything—in.

At least visiting my Aunt Barbara I could borrow a bathrobe. I managed to fashion an almost respectable outfit out of a dress coat with leggings and my last tank top and a scarf.

I've written before about European washers and trying to figure out the interface. This one was equally hopeless. So I set it (to 4 hours? what could possibly take that long?) and went out to explore the antica district.

Palermo is so quiet after Napoli, with smoother streets and many fewer people. Maybe they've all gone to the villages they came from.

I was ravenous, but nearly everything was closed. I took this Coast Guard photo thinking of Cousin Bill.

I finally found an open bar and ordered an antipasto assortment. I didn't expect they'd all be fried: fried rice balls, fried cheese, fried chickpeas. I swear one of the croquettes was fried mashed potatoes. Pretty tasty, but still. I really wanted a salad.

Next stop was the supermarket, my first on this trip. I had a kitchen available and no idea if anything would be open Christmas Eve or Christmas day.

Pretty cute pineapples, though I resisted.

In the end, I purchased breakfast and salad fixings, and got a great deal on 2 for 1 cannoli for 2 euros. And let me say, that supermarket cannoli was better than any cannoli I've eaten since I was a kid.

I came back to the apartment and waited and waited. Once I tried interrupting the washer, to no avail. I was worried it was going to add 4 more hours as a penalty. Ultimately my laundry took 5 hours. And then it was dark outside, and all my clothes were wet. No blow dryer. So I turned on the heat and strung up my socks and the festive clothes I hope to wear tomorrow. I am excited about having really clean clothes. (Otherwise I have a pair of shorts that double as a swimsuit.)

The piece de resistance was getting hooked on an Italian reality TV show. Each week a famous chef takes 4 up and coming chefs, and they visit and rate each other's restaurants round robin style.

It was kind of like Queer Eye for the Straight restauranteur. In Italian, which I don't speak, but increasingly understand.

Anyway, my pants are wet, so I'm staying in for midnight mass. I'll leave you with this giant Christmas tree, and memories of waiting up for Santa. Sometimes there's nothing better than a clean, dry pair of socks. And cannoli in Sicily.

Midnight mass starts in half an hour.