Vacation / Travel Supplement
Scenic Sicily: Mediterranean island even has a volcano
Smoke rises from craters in Mount Etna, Sicily’s active volcano, which last erupted in 2006. (Submitted photo by Regina Fink) Click for a larger version.
By John F. Fink
SICILY—My initial impression of Sicily was, “What a humongous rock!”
It’s a mountainous island dropped into the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.
Sicily has a rich history, which isn’t surprising when you realize its location. It’s near the mainland of Italy, but still only 70 miles from Africa.
Plato wrote about people flocking to this island “like frogs around a pond.” Greek legends about their gods in Sicily go back to the eighth century B.C.
Sicily became a province of Rome in 227 B.C. When the Roman Empire was divided in 286, Sicily became part of the Byzantine Empire. The Vandals in Africa conquered the island in 468 A.D. Arab Muslims ruled Sicily beginning in 878 until the Normans came in 1061.
Sicily was taken over by Spain in 1282. It was from Sicily that the great fleet was rallied which defeated the Muslims at Lepanto in 1570. In the early 19th century, Sicily was controlled by the Bourbons.
In 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi landed at Marsala, on the west coast, and defeated a Bourbon force. Sicily was freed from Spain. It became part of Italy when the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861.
During World War II, there was heavy fighting in Sicily until it fell to the Allied forces in 1943. The Allies then used Sicily as the jumping off point to conquer Italy.
Today, Sicily has a mixed culture of Italians, Spanish, Africans and Eastern Europeans. The Sicilian dialect is a composite of Italian, Spanish and Arabic. Sicily has a low birthrate, but a high immigration rate of people migrating from Africa.
I visited Sicily with my daughter, Regina, and her friend, Gina. After our arrival in Palermo, we took a cab to the Cappella Palatina in the Norman Palace. It was built by King Roger II from 1130 to 1140, although all the mosaics weren’t completed until the 1170s.
When you walk into the chapel, you are immediately struck by the fact that there is gold everywhere. The chapel is filled with mosaics that tell the story of Genesis at one level and then scenes from the Acts of the Apostles at a lower level.
The mosaic of the earth being separated from the sea as part of creation shows the terrestrial globe as a sphere of water in which there are three areas of land. America and Oceania had not yet been discovered.
The creation of Adam shows God and Adam with the same face to illustrate that God made man in his own image. There are scenes of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit, their expulsion from Eden, the sacrifices by Cain and Abel, Cain killing Abel and so on up through the story of Noah and the ark, the story of Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob wrestling with an angel.
The cupola above the choir contains the stern figure of Christ Pantocrator, which shows an Eastern Christian influence since the Orthodox use that figure to portray both God the Father and Jesus.
Then we walked to the cathedral, which dates from 1185. It’s an extremely large church built on the site of a Byzantine church and, later, a mosque. It contains the tombs of King Roger II; his daughter, Constance; Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, who died in 1250; his wife; and Constance of Aragon, who died in 1222.
The next day, the tour we were on took us to Monreale, one of Europe’s supreme cathedrals. It was built on Monte Reale—the Royal Mountain—by the Norman King William II, the grand-nephew of Roger II, between 1172 and 1174.
William claimed that he had a vision of the Blessed Virgin asking him to build the church. A bronze statue in front of the church shows William presenting the church to Mary, a scene that is also depicted in a mosaic panel in the church.
Just as inside the Cappella Palatina, this church is filled with beautiful mosaics—64,000 square feet of them—that tell stories from the Bible.
As Regina said, “They practiced with the Cappella Palatina,” and then made this cathedral much larger. Many of the mosaic panels are identical to those in the Cappella Palatina.
As always in a church with Eastern influence, the great figure of Christ Pantocrator towers above the central apse. In his left hand, he holds a Bible open to the words, “I am the light of the world. Whosoever follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life” (Jn 8:12)—written in Latin.
East and West come together in this cathedral. It’s a Catholic church, but with Orthodox and Arab-Muslim influences. It was the Arab-Muslims who actually constructed the church for King William II.
The tombs of both William I—who succeeded his brother, Roger II—and William II are in the cathedral.
We then returned to central Palermo and stopped at the Quattro Canti, the Four Corners. Each of the four corners has a central statue and fountain at the bottom symbolizing the four seasons. Above them are statues of four Spanish kings: Charles V and Philips II, III and IV. And above them are patron saints of the old city quadrants: Christina, Ninfa, Oliva and Agatha.
Just to the south of this corner, in front of the City Hall, is the magnificent Fontana Pretoria, a central fountain surrounded by statues of sea horses, mermaids, dolphins, cherubs and, especially, Greek gods and goddesses. All of the male and female statues are nude, which led to it being called the “Piazza of Shame.”
We then drove to Cefalu, a city on the northern coast of Sicily at the foot of a promontory with a sheer drop to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It has sandy beaches, and people were sunbathing or swimming.
The cathedral here was also built by King Roger II.
Apparently, Roger survived a shipwreck nearby and pledged a church to Mary in gratitude for his escape. He wanted it to be Sicily’s most important religious building, but his successors preferred Palermo and moved his tomb to the cathedral there.
Like the Palatine Chapel, this cathedral has many mosaics. Christ Pantocrator has the Bible open to the same passage quoted earlier. This was the first mosaic of Christ Pantocrator in Sicily, much repeated across the island.
Besides Palermo, visitors should also try to see Marsala on the west coast, Agrigento on the south, and Syracuse and Taormina on the east coast.
Marsala is famous for its wine. We visited a winery then a factory that makes olive oil.
According to legend, Agrigento was founded by Daedalus and his son, Icarus, after they fled from Crete “by air.” Historically, it goes back to 582 B.C. when it was founded by colonists from Crete and Rhodes. It is important today because of its archaeological site.
The Valley of the Temples has ruins of four temples, beginning with the Temple of Juno (Hera), built between 460-440 B.C. The temple still has its 25 columns, although they are not in good condition.
The Temple of Concord is the best-preserved of the temples. It has six columns in the front and 13 on either side. It used to have colorful decorations, but those have disappeared over the centuries. In the sixth century A.D., it was turned into a Christian church, and some traces of that remain.
The Temple of Heracles—or Hercules—is the oldest of the temples. It was destroyed by an earthquake and is now a heap of ruins, but is in the process of being re-erected. It was once the size of the Parthenon in Athens.
Finally, there is the Temple of Zeus—or Jupiter for the Romans. Still in ruins, at one time it was one of the largest temples built in ancient times, measuring 373 feet by 118 feet.
Syracuse, on the east coast, was once the most powerful city in the known world, first colonized by Greeks from Corinth in 734 B.C. Between 416 and 413 B.C., there was war between Syracuse and Athens. Later, the city fell to the Romans, and after that to the Byzantines, Arabs and Normans.
We began our tour in the Neopolis—a new city, the most recent—from the fifth century B.C. We began at the “Latomies of Paradise,” which were large quarries from which the Syracusans obtained the limestone for their palaces, temples and fortifications. They are called latomies because they were also the prisons for the Athenian slaves who were captured and who did the work. “Paradise” comes from the delightful garden in the quarry with orange trees, palm trees and magnolias. So we all bought our “ticket to Paradise” to see it.
Inside the quarry is the “Ear of Dionysius,” a cave that somewhat resembles an ear, or at least Caravaggio thought so. It was he who gave it the name when he was told that because of the amazing acoustics in the cave Dionysius the Elder could hear what the prisoners were saying.
Other attractions in Syracuse are the Greek Theater, built in the third century B.C., once the second largest theater in the world after the theater in Ephesus; the Altar of Hieron II, dedicated to Zeus, long enough that 100 oxen could be sacrificed at the same time; and the Amphitheater, where Syacusans watched gladiator fights.
Taormina has to be the most beautiful city in Sicily, located high above the Ionic Sea. Looking at the sea below from the window of our hotel’s restaurant, a member of our tour said, “It doesn’t look real—more like a painting.”
Taormina has long been a magnet for authors and celebrities. D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams all wrote while they lived here. Movie stars who enjoyed Taormina include Cary Grant, Orson Welles, Greta Garbo and Rita Hayworth.
Nearby is Mount Etna. We could see smoke coming from a couple of its more than 150 craters. Regina joined several others to go up the volcano, but I decided not to join them.
We did many other things during this trip to Sicily, including eating delicious Sicilian food. Anyone who makes a trip to Italy might consider visiting this beautiful island.
(John F. Fink is editor emeritus of The Criterion.) †
