Sicily Guide

Stephanie Holmes at BBC News gives an encouraging portrait of a changing Sicily.

In the Cosa Nostra’s stronghold of Palermo, Sicily’s sprawling port capital, the Mafia have ways and means of knowing if you are turning a profit. And inevitably they want a cut.

“It starts with them glueing over your keyhole,” explains Cecile Lambert, a young member of an association, Addiopizzo, that aims to free the city’s shopkeepers from the tyranny of extortion payments. “That’s a clear signal that they are looking for the pizzo.”

The pizzo - or protection money - is paid monthly and the sum is even negotiable. If you are unable, or unwilling, to interpret the Cosa Nostra’s symbolic language then they are usually more than happy to make it clearer.

Read more at BBC News

I am always intrigued on how the international press portraits Italian affairs. I was about to publish a post on wine today, but I changed my mind when I saw this article about the bridge on the Messina Strait on the Wall Street Journal. As I have written in the past, I am a supporter of the bridge and hope to see it built. I know that Italy cannot afford it at the moment, but it will eventually one day.

In America, politicians score points with voters by railing against bridges to nowhere. In Italy’s election on Sunday and Monday, candidates are worked up about a non-bridge to somewhere.

Shortly after the birth of modern Italy in 1865, the government began preparing to build a two-mile span linking the island of Sicily to the mainland. The bridge, which was to connect the Sicilian city of Messina to the Calabria region on the toe of Italy’s boot, was to be the physical symbol of the country’s unity.

It has been in the planning ever since, and over the years, experts have studied the bridge’s impact on everything from Mediterranean trade to bird migration. But ground has yet to be broken, making the bridge an emblem of the chronic indecisiveness that links Italy to the past.

Read more here

Wine has been made in Sicily since at least the fifth century B.C., but it’s taken about 2,500 years to get it right.

Even 20 years ago, Sicily was known mainly for Marsala and dessert wines, while many of the region’s cooperatives deliberately overproduced wine so it could be distilled into industrial alcohol, as allowed under EU laws.

Only a handful of Sicilian wineries, like Duca di Salaparuta and Regaleali, used modern technology to produce premium varietals, and only in 1995 did the Planeta family, with landholdings in Sambuca di Sicilia since the 1600s, produce its first commercial vintage — a highly successful chardonnay and a fiano.

Read more at Bloomberg.com

The Sicilian Vespers is a phrase which refers to a bloody incident which took place on Easter Monday, 1282. At the Church of the Holy Spirit, half a mile to the south-east of Palermo, French officials mingled with the crowds to join in the festivities as the bells rang for evening prayer. The French were “overfamiliar” with some of the Sicilian women. Scuffles broke out. Daggers were drawn. Soon there were cries in the Sicilian dialect of “Death to the Frenchmen” (”Moranu li Franchiski!”).

Read more at Telegraph.co.uk

And - of course - they feature one of my favorites: Amaro Averna from Caltanissetta. […] In Italy, amari are typically consumed while standing at a bar, or after dinner when a bottle of the house’s preferred amaro is set on the table once the plates are cleared. Some brands, like Fernet-Branca, Ramazzotti and Averna, have even become national names in Italy, available at bars and trattorias up and down the Italian peninsula.

Read more at San Francisco Crhonicle

Sicily won two great gold medals, three gold medals, two silver medels and one bronze medal at the 16th edition of Vinitaly. The largest wine show in the world has progressively and increasingly become a mainstay even on an international scale by welcoming innovations and appealing to operators not only as a trade exhibition but also and especially as a full-scale reference “event”.

The Sicilian wines that won are:

Great Gold Medals
- Marsala doc superiore riserva dolce ‘Oro’ 1999 by Carlo Pellegrino di Marsala (Trapani)
- Sicilia igt Moscato by Fratelli Lombardo di Marsala (Trapani)

Gold Medals
- Marsala doc superiore dolce by Francesco Intorcia & Sons di Marsala (Trapani)
- Sicilia igt Syrah ‘Aquilae’ 2006 by cantina sociale Viticultori associati di Canicattì (Agrigento)
- Sicilia igt Moscato liquoroso 2005 by Casano di Marsala (Trapani).

An international group of professional actors will be led in a workshop exploring tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the English translation by renowned poet Ted Hughes. The workshop will be conducted on the Island of Stromboli, as close as we can get to Ovid’s original setting.

Daily classes will include advanced Linklater voice work along with “Movement and Text Technique” created by Alessandro Fabrizi. Michael Chekhov work will begin during the second week. The workshop process will culminate in a series of site-specific performances at different locations on the island of Stromboli and a final public presentation at the Anfiteatro Eos in Stromboli, an outdoor amphitheatre whose backdrop is the Mediterranean Sea.

Alessandro Fabrizi is a theater director and actor, and teaches Voice at the “Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D’Amico” in Rome and is Faculty Member of the Actors’ Center of New York.

For more information and cost, please visit http://www.ragnarfreidank.com/Stromboli2008.htm

Smouldering volcanoes, bubbling mud baths and steaming fumaroles make these tiny islands north of Sicily a truly hot destination. This extract from Time Out’s new Italy guide reveals the best places to eat, sleep and play.

Read more at Guardian.co.uk

Linda Puglisi Zanelotti rediscovers her father’s hometown in Sicily.

That’s my Sicilian uncle Joe whispering a final piece of advice at our table in the restaurant, the one with no name and no menu. He wanted me to remember . . . remember this town of Novara, even as it’s taken on a new identity of late, emerging as a center for agritourism just across the strait from the Italian mainland. But what he really wanted me to remember . . . remember was my heritage in the village of San Marco, near Messina, the little corner of the world where my father had spent his youth. I knew my father — indeed, we all did — as the gentle but gregarious owner of a shoe repair shop in Anacostia. But he was much more, and Uncle Joe seemed to be implying that you couldn’t really understand how much more without a trip into the past.

Read more at the WashingtonPost.com

If you are planning to rent a car while in Italy, here is an interesting post by James Martin on About.com.

We’ve completed a drive that took us from our home in northern Tuscany all the way to Agrigento, Sicily and back, a total of 3220 kilometers, or just over 2000 miles. You may be interested in the travel costs, considering we have leased an economical Renault Clio Diesel.
Diesel fuel has caused protests here in Italy for its rather sudden rise in price, now pretty close to the cost of gasoline at 1.35€ a liter. We bought 52 gallons of it on our trip.

Read more at About.com