Sicily Guide

Italy’s woodlands are already dying as climate change starts to bite in southern Europe, experts warn.

A report represented to the Italian government said that eight out of 10 trees across Italy’s varied ecosystems were already suffering from the effects of rising temperatures and diminishing rainfall.

Professor Carlo Blasi of the Inter-university Centre for Bio-diversity at Rome’s La Sapienza University said the research showed that a third of the country’s woodland was seriously threatened, and that 60 per cent was likely to suffer permanent damage.

The warning echoes fears that the Mediterranean, and Italy in particular, is proving highly vulnerable to climate change.

Read more at Telegraph.co.uk

The northeast city of Trento is the best place to live in Italy, according to an annual survey by the economic daily Il Sole 24 Ore released on Monday.

The north also took second and third place with Bolzano and Aosta respectively.

The survey compares Italy’s 103 provincial capitals according to six basic measuring sticks: living standards, business and work conditions, law and order, health and environmental services, population and leisure time.

The survey also takes into account what residents think about where they live.

Trento this year climbed three positions to the top thanks to ranking high for business, living standards, leisure time and law and order.

This year’s survey once again showed a major gap between north and south.

Agrigento in Sicily was found to be the worst city, a position held last year by Catania, also in Sicily.

Il Sole 24 Ore pointed out that residents Trento have a per capita income of 25,000 euros, double that of residents Agrigento, while the unemployment rate in Trento was 3.1% compared to 13.3% in the Sicilian city.

Among Italy’s leading cities, Milan retained its position at sixth, while Rome leapt 15 places and this year was ranked eighth.

Bergamo made the best progress in this year’s survey by gaining 24 places to come in 20th, while Isernia plummeted 29 positions to 79th.

Rounding out the top ten were last year’s number one Siena in seventh place while Belluno, also a former number one, was third, Sondrio fifth, Trieste ninth and Udine tenth.

The bottom ten cities were all in the south and were: Caserta and Palermo (94th), Vibo Valentia (95th), Caltanissetta (96th), Reggio Calabria (97th), Taranto (98th), Catanzaro (99th), Catania (100th), Foggia (101st), Benevento (102nd) and Agrigento (103rd).

Source: Regione VDA

A priceless Caravaggio once attributed to a “follower” of the Italian Baroque master went on public display for the first time on Saturday at a Sicilian museum.

“The Card Sharps,” authenticated as a Caravaggio after British art collector and historian Sir Denis Mahon bought it at a Sotheby’s auction in 2006 for 50,400 pounds, is now thought to be worth up to 50 million pounds (70 million euros, 100 million dollars).

The painting is an early version of a 1594 work by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio now displayed at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.

Read more at AFP.com

This has been an incredible year. We launched SicilyGuide back in February 2007. The feedback we have received has been wonderful. Visits to the site and daily blog have skyrocketed from month to month.

Thank you to all of you! We will be back on December 26!

A nice idea for the holidays from Boston.com.

The crush of holiday shopping and planning can get to you, sometimes making you only want to get away. So what better time to think about heading for some of those faraway places in 2008? Take a deep breath, put aside the quest for gifts, and consider these offers:

[…]

Sicily is warmer than much of Europe in winter, with temperatures in the low 60s, and so TourCrafters calls its offering the Sicily Hot Deal. A six-night $929 package, valid Jan. 8-March 20, includes round-trip airfare from Boston and New York to either Palermo or Catania, three nights at the three-star Cristal Palace Hotel in Palermo, three nights at the three-star Stesicorea Palace in Catania, daily breakfast, seven days’ car rental, and hotel service charges and taxes.

Top Cruises will launch a new Route to its 2008 cruises departing from Messina and going to Spain and Tunisia. This new line is aimed to attract the Sicilian and Calabrese markets.

Is it true or another joke? The Roccoforte Golf Resort in Sciacca could open as early as the Spring 2009. According to the Roccoforte Hotels and Resort CEO, Moreno Occhipinti, the possible opening might take place in the early months of 2009 if - and I would underline IF - no more delays and stops will come from environmentalists.

As we have reported often in the past, the Golf Resort opening has been delayed in years now. We literally had lost hope in its opening, but new hope comes from the hotel company that has already invested 80 million Euros without seeing ant penny from the Sviluppo Italia program, a governmental project to attract new investments in Southern Italy.

Good news for travelers… Now Air Italy connects Napoli with two airports in Sicily: Fontanerosse in Catania and Falcone-Borsellino in Palermo with two daily flights.

From Catania to Napoli
Departure 11:20AM - Arrival 12:15
Departure 09:20PM - Arrival 10:15PM

From Napoli to Catania
Departure 09:40AM - Arrival 10:35AM
Departure 07:40PM - Arrival 08:35PM

From Palermo to Napoli
Departure 08:25AM - Arrival 09:10AM
Departure 06:20PM - Arrival 07:05PM

From Napoli to Palermo
Departure 07:00AM - Arrival 07:45AM
Departure 05:00PM - Arrival 05:45PM

For more information, visit www.airitaly.com

I was on the phone with my parents today and they confirmed that all the sorrounding mountains are covered with snow…

When winter hits northern Europe, people often head south to the coasts of Sicily and southern Italy in search of warmer weather. This year, however, the south has been hit by an unusual cold spell bringing ice and even snow. So if you want to ski, I guess Sicily’s the place to go. Read more about skiing in Sicily in Italy Skiing and Winter Sports.
If you’re traveling in Sicily around Christmas, be sure to take a look at the fascinating living nativity in Custonaci. Read more about it in Living Nativity Scenes in Italy or in our Sicily Travel Guide.

Source: About.com

And the entire country talks about this article on the New York Times these days…

All the world loves Italy because it is old but still glamorous. Because it eats and drinks well but is rarely fat or drunk. Because it is the place in a hyper-regulated Europe where people still debate with perfect intelligence what, really, the red in a stoplight might mean.

But these days, for all the outside adoration and all of its innate strengths, Italy seems not to love itself. The word here is “malessere,” or “malaise”; it implies a collective funk — economic, political and social — summed up in a recent poll: Italians, despite their claim to have mastered the art of living, say they are the least happy people in Western Europe.

“It’s a country that has lost a little of its will for the future,” said Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome and a possible future center-left prime minister. “There is more fear than hope.”

Read more on the NYTimes.com

According to AGI, the Italian Agency of Journalists, the deficit is rising again while investment by local institutions is dropping even if the Centre-North is increasing its distance from the South in terms of production spending with Lombardy that invests seven times more than Sicily.

This is the scenario depicted by the 2007 Report on ‘Local Finance in Italy’ published by ISAE (institute of economic analysis) in collaboration with the regional institutes of ‘Studi e Ricerche per il Mezzogiorno’, IRES Piemonte, IRPET and IRER. According to the report, ‘in 2006 there was a reduction of the amount both of spending and total revenues for local organisations on the GDP (5.1 and 4.7 pct).

In particular, investment spending of local organisations - which continue to be financed mainly through traditional loans - has further decreased compared to the GDP (from 1.26 pct to 1.23 pct) after the dramatic drop registered in 2005, reaching again the level of 2002. Overall, the reduction has been slightly smaller for spending than for revenues. The consequence is that net indebtedness, after two years of reductions, has grown again - albeit slightly - reaching 0.34 pct of the GDP. Also spending for interests on local debt has risen for the first time since 2002 by approximately 5 pct in comparison to 2005, highlighting an evident tension of the cost of indebtedness. In terms of territorial and dimensional analysis, local finances still present differences in the various parts of the country, both in terms of municipalities and provinces. Current spending in real terms has been reduced in the Centre-North and has remained the same in the South.

Read more at AGI

Jabbing his pole like a one-pronged pitchfork into the slow red river of rock, the ashtray salesman pulled out a wad of hot lava. I scrambled back as he swung it by me and plopped it into a mold. His partner snipped it off with big iron clippers and rammed it into shape. As he dropped the now shapely mass into a bucket, the water did a wild jig. Cooling on a crispy black ledge were a dozen more lava ashtrays, each with the words “Mount Etna, Sicily” molded into it.

As the red lava poured out of its horribly hot trap door, I unzipped the ski parka I’d rented for $2 at the lift. At 11,000 feet, even on a sunny day, it’s cold on top of Mount Etna - unless you’re spitting distance from a lava flow.

Read more at the SF Gate

He died face-down in a ravine, shot in the back of the head – his mouth stuffed full of small slips of paper. The death this week of Mafia godfather Daniele Emmanuello was as violent as his life. Police are calling it a major breakthrough in the battle to break the Sicilian Mafia, also known as Cosa Nostra. They say Emmanuello was killed accidentally by a warning shot as detectives closed in on his farmhouse hideout. But few Italians believe that, and if newspaper reports and online chatrooms are to be believed, even fewer care.

What has got them talking is what 43-year-old Emmanuello did in the last few seconds before he was shot down. Why was he apparently more interested in eating paper than defending himself with a gun? The answer is tied up with recent police successes in Italy’s war on organised crime.

Read more at The Sun

According to Dore Misuraca, regional deputy to tourism, 35 million Euros have been allocated for the construction of a new airport in Agrigento. We’ll see when/if the airport is going to be built…

During these days, Sicily Wine Travels and the Sicilian Trade Cooperation for Fishing are presenting the “Azzurro SicilyFest”, an event to promote the Pesce Azzurro (blue fish) to New York. Pesce azzurro is a generic category that includes different varieties of salt-water fish high in Omega-3’s, such as: sardines, anchovies, mackerel and sprats.

For the New York “first edition”, chefs include Andreas Zangerl of Casa Grugno in Taormina, Vincenzo Candiano of don Serafino in Ragusa and Accursio Craparo of Gazza Ladra in Modica. The participating New York restaurants are Esca, Felidia and San Domenico.

While the premiere of “Azzurro Sicilyfest” is for food, trade, and health professional, the objective is to raise awareness among American consumers of the superior quality of the Sicilian pesce azzurro.