Sicily Guide

The province of Agrigento is creating an Archeological Park to promote tourism within its borders. The Archeological Park includes nine different places: Agrigento, Aragona, Joppolo Giancaxio, Montallegro, Porto Empedocle, Raffadali, Realmonte, Santa Elisabetta and Siculiana.

Technorati Tags [ sicily | agrigento ]

A new port “Marina di Archimede” is scheduled to open in old part of Syracuse (Ortigia) in 40 months. The first stone was placed this week. Società Acqua Pia Antica Marcia is in charge of the project that will create 600 boat docks. Its cost is 30 million Euros.

Technorati Tags [ ortigia | syracuse | new port ]

The new destinations are Bologna, Bruxelles, Stoccarda and Tirana.

For more information go to www.clubair.it

Technorati Tags [ club air | trapani ]

Edward Deitch talks about this wine on MSNBC.

Mirabile’s Tannat is nothing less than elegant and refined, full of dark berry fruit — blackberry, blueberry and boysenberry — along with notes of coffee, tobacco, smoke and spice. It’s bright with ample acidity, and ripe but not overly alcoholic, an altogether complex and delicious wine. It’s too bad there are just 100 cases of it.

Tannat also figures in another first-rate Mirabile wine called Menfri ($40), a blend that combines that grape with nero d’avola and cabernet sauvignon, but which actually reminded me of a ripe pinot noir with a touch of cedar. These wines are emblematic of a new sophistication that is emerging in Sicily, which is becoming one of Italy’s most exciting wine regions.

All of the wines are imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates, New York.

Read more at MSNBC.com

Being in the travel industry, I know that you have to work when others enjoy their leisure time. It is part of the deal, no matter what. It does not seem always the case in Sicily, but new signs show a tendency in changing this attitude.

It is this week news that the president of CDS, Gaetano Pendolino, scolded the employees of the Archeological Museum of Agrigento since they were claiming days off during the holidays. I would like to hear more about this and see if Mr. Pendolino is going to win this battle. I congratulate with him and wish the best of luck!

Technorati Tags [ archeological museum of Agrigento | gaetano pendolino ]

Tim Atkin went to Sicily twenty years ago and did not enjoy his visit. Recently, he returned and acknowledges that Sicily has changed for the better in the last ten years. He affirms that the push for this transformation was made possible by a new breed of Sicilian wine producers and, above all, by Diego Planeta.

Read more at Tim’s story at the Observer Magazine

Technorati Tags [ sicilian wines | planeta ]

A dear friend from Capo d’Orlando wrote to Sicily Guide about the recent feast in his hometown. Thanks, Duilio!

On October 21 and 22, the traditional “Festa della Madonna” of Capo d’Orlando (Messina province) took place under a torrential rain. This explains the lower number of visitors for this annual feast which is very much loved in the area.

During the celebrations the “Madonna del Monte” is taken down from the “Promontorio” of the coastal city and led through its streets which were full of stands with many varieties of merchandise as the previous years.

Being this a typical event in Sicily, there were amusement rides located next to the local basketball dome. In spite of the abnormal weather conditions, a good amount of people were able to participate and enjoy their free time in Capo d’Orlando.

Technorati Tags [ madonna del monte | capo d’orlando | sicily | messina ]

With an ear for dialogue that may be compared to Tillie Olsen, Grace Paley, and Ernest Hemingway, Sicilian writer Maria Messina presents the captivating and brutal realities of women living in early-twentieth-century Italy in this first collection of her work available in English.

Behind Closed Doors portrays the habits and gestures, the words spoken and those left unsaid, of individuals caught between the traditions they respect and a desire to ease the social restrictions in their lives. Messina’s stories reveal a world in which women are shuttered in their houses, virtual servants to their families, and working men immigrate to the United States in fortune-seeking droves. It is also a world of unstated privileges in which habits and implied commands perpetuate women’s servitude.

A cultural album that captures the lives of peasant, working-class, and middle-class women, this volume will appeal to millions of Italian descendants and readers everywhere fascinated by Italian history.

Buy the book

After Mothia, Selinunte is planning to be listed in the UNESCO World Heritage Archeological Sites too. Located on the southwest coast of Sicily in the province of Trapani, Selinunte was founded by the Greeks in the 7th century BC. Its name comes from the word selinon, which means wild fennel, a widely common plant throughout the area. Selinunte flourished for two centuries under Greek domination. Although Agrigento counts better preserved Greek temples, Selinunte boasts more temples, all identified by letter. The setting over the Mediterranean Sea gives to the archeological ruins a unique display for a suggestive and breathtaking experience.

Read more at SicilyGuide.com

Using photos and narratives, the exhibit opens on November 4, 2007 and stays open through February 3, 2008. Sicilian Crossings: Sicilian Emigration to America and the Derived Communities tells the story of one of the largest groups of immigrants to come through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924.

This exhibit explores the economic and political reasons for the emigration of Sicilians from different geographic regions in the late 1880s through the first half of the 20th century. It depicts the life they left behind, their journey across the Atlantic, their adjustment to a new world, and their establishment of ethnic communities in the United States.

For more information http://www.statueofliberty.org/Ellis_Museum.html
How to get there

A blogger from Hawaii, but living in Sicily (interesting enough, right?) posted beautiful pictures of Cefalu’ and the Octoberfest in Zafferana.

For more pictures, please visit http://alohafromsicily.blogspot.com

A friend sent us this image from Mount Etna. I love the blue of the sky. Thanks, Franca!

Italy has a strange type of justice… You are guilty or innocent according to what people say of you. It does not count what comes out from a trial. Judges can say anything; media and people make up their mind according to their affiliation even before the verdict! It is recent news that Salvatore Cuffaro, president of the Sicilian region, has been accused of Mafia allegation and prosecutors asked for eight years of imprisonment. Of course, comments abound. Among the defenders of Mr. Cuffaro, Berlusconi “excludes in all possible ways that he may be involved in episodes in which other people suppose he is involved.”

Technorati Tags [ sicily | salvatore cuffaro | mafia | berlusconi ]

I am extremely thrilled today.  Alfonso Cevola, Italian Wine Director for Glazers, Certified Specialist in Wine and a Special Contributor to the Dallas Morning News, is sharing with Sicily Guide some of his thoughts about Sicilian wine. Enjoy!

1) Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit of what you do?
I am a third generation Italian American, born in California, raised in and around his grandfather’s vineyard, where I had my first exposure to the grape and the vine. Living in Italy as a youth gave me the opportunity to work in my Italian relative’s vineyards in the summer and during selected harvests.

Making the move to Texas in 1978, I made wine in the early 1980’s in North Texas where I was a Gold Medal-winning winemaker in the Texas Wine Competition in 1982. By then, I had already traveled extensively in Italy and the other wine producing regions of the world, including France, Germany, Portugal, South America, California, Oregon, Washington, Texas & New Zealand. (more…)

Planeta reshaped the way wine is made in Sicily and helped the region to come out from the bulky wine production. The Guardian talked about this winery in its October 12 issue.

Victoria Moore recalls her memories from a recent visit to the winery… Standing in a Sicilian courtyard planted with pine and palms, washed through with the scent of almonds and jasmine, Diego Planeta gestures towards the sea, in the direction of Gela, “where the Allies landed in 1943 … We still have letters from an ancestor who shipped wine - spuma rossa - out of the harbour down there to the Bourbons in Naples.”

History is hard to escape in Sicily - even the concrete tanks in the old winery behind us are painted with a peeling legend that recollects the fascist era. Go back many more centuries and you’d still find wine being made, in the Greek settlement of Agrigento. But history also means change, and Planeta has not become the most feted name in Sicilian wine by clinging to the old ways. “Our new history started in the mid-80s,” Diego’s daughter, Francesca, says, “when, as well as grecanico and nero d’avola, we planted international grape varieties - cabernet sauvignon, merlot and chardonnay - that were then very new to Sicily.”

Read more at The Guardian Unlimited