In a bit of time I will be there for four days. Please tell me what I need to know, food of course included. I'll be able to do a day trip, but mostly I'll be in Palermo.
Palermo, Sicily bleg
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In Sicily, remember, no matter what you see, remember, you didn’t see anything
From my dim memories:
Food: Arancini di Riso (to be found in any neighborhood bar)
In Palermo, depart from the renovated boulevards, shopping streets und plazas that all the tourists tend to frequent, to see the stark contrast to the real Palermo. Derelict buildings, burned out cars, busy markets, funeral processions, cats ….
Trains: What looks like a tiny trip on a map, is a giant und uncertain undertaking for the sicilian railroad.
Shady folks: Decline any “business deals” and be wary about folks who are too friendly and want to invite you and “show you around”.
Also, keep your man-purse tight to your body.
Language: No, I mean absolutely zero English in most of Sicily, not even in “tourist info spots”. French or Spanish gets you farther, but better learn some Italian.
Btw. the Sicilians are one of the cultures where shaking your head means “yes”.
Most of the cities in the interior are dull and pointless.
And another important one: In intersections where intervisibility cannot be established at normal speed, the first car to honk gets the right-of-way.
Drive as fast as you can and don’t stop at red lights. At an intersection, be the first to cross, even if you’re a pedestrian.
Sicilian cuisine is among the most renowned in Italy. Pastry is especially good, and reflects both the Norman, Arab and Spanish influences.
Cakes:
- Cassata Siciliana
- Granita alla Mandorla
- Gelato con la Brioche (whose dough reminds me, curiously, of the Challah I buy in New York)
- Pasta di Marzapane, aka “frutta martorana” (=marzipan)
- Cannoli siciliani
- maybe Pignolata (not strictly from Palermo, but since you are there…)
regular courses:
- Arancini di riso
- Pasta con le sarde
- Pasta con le melanzane
- Fritto misto (this is fried fish, calamari, sardines, and whatnot; excellent)
- Restaurants have both good steaks and good fish there; I’d go for the fish, which is tastier than what you get in Virginia.
This takes care of gustative touring.
Sightseeing: first of all, look at the people, who are always the most interesting sighteeing, in pretty much an city. Palermitani are as diverse-looking as newyorkers. Of course, women in NY don’t hold a candle to those in Palermo. Second, take a trip to the Market, called la Vucciria, which makes for excellent olfactive and auditive tourism. Third visit the usual places: Duomo di Monreale, Piazza Cappuccini (where you’ll visit the slightly macabre cemetery for the aristocracy), Teatro Massimo. Italy has also an inordinate number of museums, and Palermo is no exception. A “Teatro delle Marionette” (=marionettes) may interest you.
scicilians tend to speak “italian” (as in the text-book variant) almost as a second language. the lion’s share (but certainly not all! esp old folks!) will know italian were you to converse in it, but wouldn’t speak it amungst themselves.
The most interesting thing to see is all the home-starts. there are scores and scores of quarter-finished and less homes in Sicily, many to do with gaming the system, bizarre incentives, and regulatory arbitrage. Behind almost every started-and-abandoned home there is a sketchy and likely illegal story. Either laundered money built it, “cement fell off the back of a truck”, the mafia controls building. But it’s interesting as they are physical artifacts of corruption. It’s litter on the landscape and litter on the social scape. Worth a thought as you notice them.
street food (pane e paniedde – chickpea fritters, pane c’a meuza – bread and spleen,…) in antica focacceria san francesco (http://www.afsf.it/); for a good dinner with local wines I would recommend Divino Rosso (Via Salita S. Antonio).
try finding a translation of anything by Andrea Camilleri for some local color. I don’t go for sciascia or lampedusa.
your best bet is some kind of seafood pasta. i’m allergic, but i hear it’s good. something with triglie.
if someone’s bothering you try: minchia! non mi rompi i cabasisi!
http://www.thomasroma.com/books/sicilian_passage/
We spent some time in Palermo and the rest of Sicily in May. Seemed like a fair number of people spoke English in Palermo (not everyone, probably about as many as in, say Seville or Granada in Spain). Great food: Pasta alla Norma (with tomatoes, eggplant, and ricotta salata), Pasta con sarde (with fresh sardines), lots of wonderful swordfish (“spada”), clams (“vongole”) and other seafood.
Try to get to a puppet show ! it’s a traditional art form that isn’t found in very many other places — medieval romances, basically. You don’t need the language to follow the action.
I second the recommendation for a Camilliere novel. Try “The Terra Cotta Dog” — it’s the second in the series, but much better than the earliest of the novels.
Have fun!
I concur with many of the recommendations.
Foodwise, I love arancini, but they are not much different from the supplì you’ll get in Rome. Pasta con Sarde is one of my favorite dishes, and hard to find off of Sicily. Caponata is a good Sicilian choice for antipasti. Sicily is known for it’s sweets, part of it’s Arab heritage. It is home, for instance, to canolli. The marzipan fruits are also wonderful, and Palermo is especially known for them.
The cathedrals of Palermo and Monreale are very nice, but I think my favorite site in the city is the vucciria market. It has a real souk feel to it. I wouldn’t leave town without taking a wander through it.
The ruins of Segesta are not as grand as those in Agrigento or Syracusa, but they are only about 30 miles away.
I’m not sure when you’ll be in town, but the Festa della Spiga is a week-long harvest festival in early August about 50 miles away in Gangi.
My favorite site on the island is probably too far away, but the Villa Casale near Piazza Armerina, Maximian’s former country estate, is breathtaking. Best collection of imperial Roman mosaics in the world.
If you want something different, take a day trip to Gibellina Nuova:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibellina
Plenty of modern architecture.
farmer:
the local style of tomato sauce, as well, is well worth a taste. It’s called arabiatta, inspired by arabian cuisine. it’s spicy and not at all sweet.
I don’t want to be too precious, but that is actually incorrect on many levels. The name is arrabbiata, which means “angry” in italian. It doesn’t come from “Arab”. Arabs had left Sicily centuries before the arrival of tomato from the Americas. Moreover, it is a roman not a sicilian dish (although it is popular nationwide).
Monreale is lovely, historically interesting, and provides a great view of Palermo. The town itself is poor.
For a day trip, depending on your regard for remnants of imperial Rome, consider a drive to the remains of the palace of the provincial governor in Enna (I believe).
Scilian wine is making it onto the international stage. The most renowned red grape is Nero d’Avola, which is used to make wines that range from soft and fleshy to big and massive. There is a winery called Tane that I am familiar with. Also, Cusumano is a good producer; I particularly like their Nero and they produce white wines from the grapes catarratto and insolia, among others, that make white wines with some verve and charm.
No one seems to have mentioned the Capella Palatina, which has nice mosaics (on a much smaller scale than the cathedrals in Monreale and Cefalu) and a wonderful carved wooden ceiling.
I recall eating pasta alle vongole as a desert course since I had enjoyed the first course so much.
The museum is quite informative on the cultural mix that made up Sicily, including the Byzantine and Arab. Some medieval pieces are very hard to place from just looking at them.
Girgenti and Selinunte have a lot bigger piles of stone, but Segesta (which probably wasn’t a real temple) is more intact and at least when I was there a placidity which is quite wonderful. Plus it plays such a big part in the background to Thucydides.
Also, I would reiterate what people have said about standard Italian not necessarily resembling what you hear in Sicily.
San Giovanni degli Eremiti is a lovely Norman church and cloister.
For a day trip, go to Segesta for the Greek theater and temple, and then stop off at Castellammere del Golfo, ancestral home of one faction of the “Mustache Petes” in the “Castellammerese wars” for control of the Mafia during the 20s. Both sides were eventually overthrown by Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky.
Enjoy. I loved Palermo, though too many years ago. Contrary to the opinion above, I found Sciascia enchanting. Some other reading for the trip:
http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Sicily-Peter-Robb/dp/0375704582
http://www.amazon.com/Sicilian-Vespers-History-Mediterranean-Thirteenth/dp/0521437741
Another book recommendation for Palermo:
Di Lampedusa, The Leopard
More here.
The Leopard, The Leopard, The Leopard, Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s The Leopard
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