Posts in category: Heritage

In recent years, the Region of Sicily has helped establish Literary Parks in its territory, i.e. centres for the preservation and promotion of the island’s vast literary heritage. The choice of the geographical areas of the parks corresponds to the selection of intimate and cherished places that have nurtured the creative genius of each artist or hosted the characters of their works.

What are the Sicilian Literary Parks?

Literary Park named after Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Literary Park named after Luigi Pirandello

Leonardo Sciascia Literary Park

Literary Park named after Salvatore Quasimodo

A Literary Park named after Giovanni Verga

The Elio Vittorini Literary Park

The Literary Park named after Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

It stretches over a vast area of western Sicily: from Palermo, passing through the Santa Margherita area, to Palma di Montechiaro and embraces all the places linked to the writer’s family and childhood. Palermo, for example, is the setting of the famous book ‘The Leopard’ and the place of residence of the Tomasi family.

The park named after Luigi Pirandello

It focuses mainly on his house-museum in Contrada Caos, in the Agrigento area. The area extends as far as the maritime area of Porto Empedocle – a crucial place for the young Pirandello where his father’s warehouses were located – and the surrounding areas, rich in sulphur mines, a symbol of a popular world now lost but which strongly influenced the author.

The Leonardo Sciascia Literary Park

The area covered by this park is also vast: here a single route brings together the areas of the sulphur mines in western Sicily with places that have become famous for mafia-related news stories. The focal points are Regalpietra, the town born from the author’s imagination, Recalmuto, the writer’s birthplace, and Caltanissetta, where Sciascia was educated and spent his youth.

Salvatore Quasimodo Literary Park

La Terra impareggiabile (The Unrivalled Land) is the title of his last collection of poems, as well as the name of Salvatore Quasimodo’s Literary Park. Created by the will of his only heir, the park intends to take the visitor to Quasimodo’s main places: Modica, Roccalumera, Messina, Tindari, the Aeolian Islands, Syracuse, Pantalica and the Agrigento area.. All places where it is still possible to breathe in the roots of Sicilianity and the ancient Greek lyricism so dear to the author.

The Literary Park dedicated to Giovanni Verga

The Arcipelago dei Ciclopi, the municipality of Aci Trezza and the Norman Castle of Aci Castello, in the province of Catania, are the areas of the Literary Park dedicated to Giovanni Verga, where the protagonists of the author’s veristic novels lived. Here it is possible to visit places linked to the history of the Toscano family, such as the Casa del Nespolo (Medlar House), the fountain and the church of Aci Trezza.

The Literary Park named after Elio Vittorini

Last but not least is the Park dedicated to the famous writer Elio Vittorini in Syracuse. The magical city of Syracuse was the birthplace of the author and provided a wonderful backdrop for several of his works. The route includes the Island of Ortigia, the Umbertino Bridge and the astonishing beauty of the cathedral, leading visitors into a visual tale that engages all the senses.

The Road of the Writers

The Region of Sicily recently decided to dedicate a state road – which crosses the provinces of Agrigento and Caltanissetta – to its most famous writers: the Strada degli Scrittori (Writers’ Road). Created thanks to the idea of Sicilian journalist Felice Cavallaro, the stretch of SS 640 is another example of the importance that the island attaches to its culture and to the men who have made it famous throughout the world.

If you too would like to discover a special itinerary and immerse yourself in the island’s literary culture, contact us for a tailor-made tour.

Sutera – a picturesque village at the foot of a giant,  a soaring rock dominating the upper Platani valley, in an ancient and genuine dimension of unaltered charm.

Stories of “truvature”, big hidden treasures and vain attempts to find them, are part of the rich local traditions.

From a distance the soaring rock with the old monastery on top reminds one of a “meteor”, those turrets with sheer walls typical of the landascape of Thessalia.

It is all around this mountain, known as San Paolino, that the history of Sutera has developed over the centuries.

It is an ancient history with roots in legend of the mythical founder: Dedalus and archeological evidences of the presence of Sicani 6000 BC. The Greeks called it “Soter” which means “safe” for the strategic position controlling the Platani valley.

The Arab presence is reflected in the picturesque “Rabato” district, which means “closed burgh”. Along the narrow and winding alleys wrapped in silence and surrounded by little houses you breathe an old and rarefied atmosphere, as if the time has stopped. The quarter formed around the mosque, built in 875 A.d., a few traces of which are still inside the main church built in 1545 on a previous one of 1370 built by Giovanni Chiaramonte, with a nave and two side aisles with sequin gold decorations and a spectacular fusion of marble and inlays in the baroque style in the Sacrament Chapel.

Every year, at Christmas,  the little streets become the natural scenario for a living crib.

75 broad steps start from Piazza del Carmine and head to Monte san Paolino flanking the rock where stands the sanctuary dedicated to Paolino and Onofrio.Two splendid urns, masterpieces of Sicilian goldsmith art, are kept inside, containing the relics of the two protector saints.  

A walk on the big terrace is a must to enjoy the breathtaking view. Amid bare valleys and little woods you can make out the countours of no fewer than 22 towns and villages in Sicily and the imposing Mussomeli castles.

As you continue your visit of the town, you really do feel as if you were going through an open-air museum with the sensation of going back into past,  into a dimension which is ancient and genuine, in which traditions mantain their charm unaltered.

To keep good memory of all of that, try the gastronomic specialities like : “Pitirri” (a vegetable soup), “maccu” ( bean purèe), “‘mbriulati” focaccias filled with olives, sausage, onions), bread and egg rissoles, Sutera taralli, little ricotta cassatas, easter chickens, “buccellati” (Christmas sweetmeats filled with walnuts, almond and figs).

A letter by Oscar Wilde from Sicily ( April 16th, 1900)

My dear Robbie,
Well, all passed over very successfully. Palermo, where we stayed eight days, was lovely. The most beautifully situated town in the world, it dreams away its life in the Conca D’Oro, the exquisite valley that lies between two seas.The lemon-groves and the orange-gardens were so entirely perfect that I became again a Pre Raphaelite and loathed the ordinary Impressionists whose muddy souls and blurred intelligencies would have rendered but by mud and blur those “golden lamps hung in a green night” that filled me up with such joy. The elaborate and exquisite detail of the true Pre-Raphaelits is the compensation they offer us for the absence of motion; Literature and Music being the only arts that are not immobile.       

Then nowhere, not even in Ravenna, have I seen such mosaics. In the Cappella Palatina, which from pavement to domed ceilings is all gold, one really feels as if one was sitting in the heart of a great honeycomb looking at angels singing; and looking at angels, or indeed at people singing, is much nicer than listening to them. For this reason the great artists always give to their angels lutes without strings, pipes without vent-holes, and reeds through which no wind can wander or make whistlings.       
Monreale you have heard of, with its cloisters and cathedral. We often drove there, the “cocchieri” most dainty finely-curved boys. In them, not in the Sicilian horses, is race seen. The most favoured were Manuele, Francesco and Salvatore. I loved them all, but only remember Manuele.       

I also made great friends with a young Seminarist who lived in the Cathedral of Palermo, he and eleven others in little rooms beneath the roof, like birds.         
Every day he showed me all over the Cathedral, and I really knelt before the huge porphyry sarcophagus in which Frederick II lies. It is a sublime bare monstrous thing, blood-coloured, and held up by lions, who have caught some of the rage of the great Emperor’s restless soul. At first, my young friend, Giuseppe Loverde by name, gave me information but on the third day I gave information to him, and rewrote History as usual, and told him all about the >Supreme King and his Court of Poets, and the terrible book tthat he never wrote. Giuseppe was fifteen, and most sweet. His reason for entering the Church was singularly medieval. I asked him why he thought of becoming a clerico and how.       

He answered ” my father is a cook, and most poor, and we are many at home, so it seemed to me a good thing that there should be in so small a house as ours one mouth less to feed, for, though I am slim, I eat much: too much alas! I fear”.         

I told him to be comforted, because God used poverty often as a means of bringing people to Him. and used riches never, or but rarely. So Giuseppe was comforted ì, and I gave him a little book of devotion, very pretty and with far more pictures than prayers in it;  so of great service to Giuseppe, whose eyes are beautiful. I also gave him many lire,and prophesied for him a Cardinal’s hat, if he remain very good, and never forgot me.

He said he never would: and indeed I don’t think he will, for every day I kissed him behind the high altar.

When cooking, we draw on the precious goods that nature puts at our disposal and harmoniously combine them to …