SelectionWhile waiting for better days, it is possible to discover the world without leaving your room. Destination Palermo, the largest city in Sicily.
Change soundtrack
In terms of music, we more readily associate Sicily with the soundtrack of the trilogy of Godfather, signed Nino Rota, than alternative rock. It is to ignore the underground Sicilian musician Gioele Valenti, known since the early 2000s as Herself, and today as JuJu. His latest album, Maps and Territory, released in 2019, delivers a hypnotic psychedelic sound blending choirs, electro arrangements, Mediterranean influences and African rhythms. A crossbreeding that echoes the multicultural history of Sicily and testifies to the artist’s indignation at the treatment reserved today for migrants.
Watch a parade
Since its beginnings in 1985, the Dolce & Gabbana house has never ceased to pay tribute to the Italian island, where one of the two creators, Domenico Dolce, was born. It was with his father, a tailor living not far from Palermo, that he learned about sewing before meeting Stefano Gabbana in a clothing house in Milan. Called Patchwork di Sicilia, the spring-summer 2021 collection celebrates the diversity of the island’s cultural influences through fabric collages and patterns (mosaics, citrus fruits, baroque effects, historic brocades, etc.), made from fabrics of ‘old collections. For your viewing pleasure, you can watch the parade held in Milan in September on YouTube, in the former Metropol cinema – bought by the fashion house in 2006 -, covered with patchwork from floor to ceiling for the occasion.
Treat yourself to a moorish head
Getting lost in the alleys of Palermo is inevitably done under the supervision of the Testa di Moro. Fashioned in painted ceramic, this vase, which represents the head of a Moor or a young Sicilian, adorns most of the balconies. Figure of local folklore, it finds its origins at the time when the island was under Arab domination. Legend has it that a young Palermo woman, fallen into the arms of a seductive and fickle Moor, cut off her lover’s head before placing it on his balcony. She grew a basil so luxuriant there that her neighbors ordered vases reproducing the famous Testa di Moro. Today, the object is chosen in handcrafted earthenware from Caltagirone, cradle of Sicilian ceramics, and can be bought on site, or, failing that, on Giacomo Alessi’s website.
Cry in paradise
Cinema Paradiso gave Philippe Noiret one of his most famous roles and Sicilian director Giuseppe Tornatore a double consecration, with the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 1989 and the Oscar for best foreign film in 1990. The film is a story friendship between the young Salvatore, “Toto”, and the projectionist of his village, Alfredo. To the music of the giant Ennio Morricone, the images, bathed in sunlight, allow you to escape in the province of Palermo, to the villages of Palazzo Adriano and Cefalù, on the Mediterranean coast.
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