The way to understand Sicily and its main destinations
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"Sicily, a museum of art and culture between sun and sea"
What is the identity of this land born of the waves? - You may find yourself asking this question after your first encounter. Indeed it may well happen. For it is not easy to grasp the meaning of this island, which is itself a continent. But don't despair - that's how it always is: at first sight you may well not fully understand.
It is not easy to understand Sicily - Just like a beautiful woman, Sicily needs a certain type of approach and cannot be easily won. All you can do is to let yourself be seduced. Just as the first Mycenaeans were seduced when they came this way to buy obsidian and pumice-stone in the Aeolian Islands, when nothing else was known for cutting and polishing. Just like the Phoenicians, who along these very coasts set up their trading stations and left them in the charge of people taken on in every corner of the Mediterranean, people who lived in peace, trading with Siculs, Sicans, and Elymians. Why were they called Elymians? Ex limen, in Latin means refugee, driven from home. This gives an immediate picture of the ancient island civilization. Everyone was always welcome. Just like the Greeks, seeking somewhere to live in peace, and hosts of others. As happens today to many other unfortunates who escape to these shores, fleeing from poverty, war, famine, and oppression.
Sicily welcomes everyone. In civil fashion, and has always done so, and one and all become Sicilians. For you don't have to be born here - Hermocrates of Syracuse made this point way back in 424 BC, when he said: “We are neither Ionians nor Dorians, we are Sicilians.”. We use the hand gestures of the ancient Phoenician merchants, we are as crafty as the Greeks, as captious as the Byzantines, and as blasé as the knights of Andalusia, and we still show great respect for the dead and for the necropolises of all those who died on the island. In our language, behaviour, food, and religion we carry fragments of Greek culture, but also Roman, Byzantine, Muslim, Norman, Angevin, Aragonese, Catalan… Each of these has left a mark, architectural traces, masterpieces of art, transforming the island into a unique open-air museum.
Sicily offers pleasure and joy to each and every one of its visitors - And to think that in the Middle Ages Sicily was described as being “seared and riven by lava and sun, like a hell on earth, inhabited by people more devil-like than human”. At the other extreme is the “invention” of the Sicily described by Stendhal, whose “Duchesse de Palliano” declares: “…as I travelled through Sicily, my purpose was not just to observe the natural phenomena of Etna or to clarify to my own mind and to that of others what the ancient Greek authors said of Sicily. Above all I sought the pleasure of the eye, which in this singular land is truly great. ”. Of all the imaginable forms of dissolution, travelling is the greatest I know; it is what one invents when one is tired of other people... One may sometimes get angry, but at least one amuses oneself, and immensely so.” Thus spoke Gustave Flaubert. And, reading between the lines, this reveals the supreme and sublime voluptuousness of a journey of discovery. Sicilian architectural remains are amongst the finest of all antiquity. It is not easy to resist the charm of works whose beauty has conquered visitors of every epoch. Particularly the cultured travellers completing their “Grand Tour”. The greatest of these, the “Traveller” par excellence, is beyond any doubt Wolfgang Goethe. Even if his “Italienische Reise” has been criticized by many for its omissions, inaccuracies, and trivialities. How can that be? It is simply that his is a journey to the end of history, the end of time; that great journey that each of us would like to make into the heart of human nature. Perhaps we can find Aleph in this island, the place where all places meet, the history that contains all histories. The city of the dead at Pantalica, a charming place to live in.
Content taken from: Regione Sicilia
Main destinations in Sicily
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Discover the history and the treasures of the main destinations of Sicily by selecting the site's names from the map below
