Palermo Spring
This letter comes with a soundtrack, because the second I sat foot in Palermo the Godfather theme started playing in my head.
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Select any of the three song below to accompany this article - they all fit the general vibe of Palermo in the summer.
Let’s set the scene.
Scene 1
Date: 27th of may.
Location: Sicily, Palermo - year circa 1945/2025.
Extras: Violinist playing a slow sad melody at the piazza (not pizza. Look it up if you don’t know), cars driving like the drivers are drunk and insane, palm trees gently swaying in the warm breeze, someone called Vito walking hurriedly across.
Cue music: Intensifies slightly…If you haven’t put one one of the numbers above, then do it now to support your very tense further reading experience
Scene 1: The charming female lead standing in the middle of an open square, with hopes and a carry-on suitcase, while desperately looking at google maps to figure out which direction to go. A drop falls slowly from her forehead because it is a 1000 degree warm, even if the calendar still says May.
Later that night
I walk out of my three meter tall ceilings palazzo-like accommodation. The city is my destination. End scene.
Dreamlike scene turns to social realism
The next couple of days let me down little as I discovered that not all of Palermo was dreamlike movie-scenisk. I came and immediately walked into something the looked like a Godfather 70ies film set, yellow light cascaded on everything and someone playing a violin in the square in front of the Teatro Massimo (which is featured in the film for real). Expectations on max. But the next couple of days also showed me bad and sad sides of the city. Luckily, the last day ended up being amazing, and left me with a gigantic wow feeling.
Look up to find beauty and wonders.. but down to avoid stepping in piles of garbage
The city is unmistakably beautiful with its rich Norman-Arab-Byzantine architecture, and endlessly charming with its narrow streets, every one of them bathed i that particular yellow light, clothes hanging out to dry between the buildings in an almost Lady and the Tramp scenic way, plants growing on the sides of buildings, locals driving scooters, street venders selling woven baskets, cheese and olive oil, a violin and a soprano performing somewhere nearby. Where ever in Palermo I looked up, the city was magical.
But every street - not just the turist streets, but the small streets with no turist as well - are filled with litter. Whoever you talk to who have visited the city, will mention the litter in the streets as one of the first things. And it is frankly heartbreaking. At first I thought about how little respect some turist have - By the water front someone had written the words “Turist have ruined our city“ in capital letters and I felt almost ashamed to have come to this city that didn’t want me there. But after a few days I started noticing how locals were not entirely without participation in the littering. It seemed like the culture of sorting your garbage, carrying it around until you find a dumpster and minimizing plastic waste in general, and that most of the world has accommodated to, hadn’t quite arrived at Palermo. I don’t know how to wrap this up, but suffice to say, that this is part of the experience of the city and as heartbreaking as it is, it should hopefully not take away from the beauty and richness you’ll find when you visit.
Montage
Let’s hit play again! Switch to the next number in the soundtrack, because we’ll get down and dirty now.
1st Clip - Main street
The Via Marqueda main street that runs through most of inner city is a must-see visit for most. But beware that it is filled with a lot of turists. This street features the famous Fontana Pretoria, the Quattro Canti and lots of street shopping. This is also an ideal place to try some of the famous Sicilian food specialities.
On a very personal note, the food was not to my taste. Too much dough, meat and everything oil fried. This is of cause not particular to Palermo, but to most street foods. I guess I am just not a street food type of person after all. I did however get some good and delicious meals at restaurants and cafe’s outside the main street.
A few honorable places were:
Haiku: Very charming Vegan restaurant with really delicious food. I had dinner there 2-3 times and each time the restaurant was empty. I still don’t know why, but possibly because I ate earlier than most locals who often dine at 8pm or later.
Find Haiku here:
https://www.instagram.com/haikupalermo/?hl=en
Via Ricasoli, 30, 90139 Palermo PA, Italy
I had breakfast and lunch at Colazione da Tiffany, a family owned cafe a few times. I highly recommend it for both food, service and location - the staff was friendly and welcoming and even recognised me only after being there ones. Big recommendation and a beautiful outdoor space to sit and eat under the palm trees.
Find Colazione da Tiffany here:
https://www.instagram.com/colazionedatiffanypalermo/
V. Generale Vincenzo Magliocco, 42, 90141 Palermo PA, Italy
Across the Palermo Cathedral was a small store and restaurant, where I had a very nice pasta dish and bought a few edible souveniers. The service in both the store and restaurant part was super nice, but there’s is only one table there, so you have to be lucky to sit down downstairs. However I believe they also had a few seats upstairs with a view over the Cathedral. However the downstairs felt a lot more intimate and I took over the table from a group of three local women, and I do always prefer the more authentic spot over a tourist spot with a view.
I cannot, for the love of god, nor on a google map figure out what the place was called. So you will have to find it yourself when you get there. When you are facing the Statua di Santa Rosalia in front of the cathedral you will have the shop and restaurant just behind you. It had a yellow facade and interior if that helps you. Best of luck my friend!
2nd Clip - The Botanical Garden
I am a person that requires a lot of options for activities in a city, so Palermo was a little short on option for my taste. I therefor sprintet to the Botanical Garden to get my plants on. It’s not that I don’t enjoy a Botanical Garden, in fact I have visited them in many countries over the years, but it is not the first thing on my to do list.
To my surprise this particular Botanic garden did hold something very much out of the ordinary. Supposedly the largest tree in Europe. And I mean this was a big biG bIG BIG tree! And for most things size does matter. Yes I said it! To be fair, very small trees are also very interesting, think a tiny bonsai tree, so I guess it is: size, big or small does matter instead. Yes, let’s keep it at that.
The three is a ficus tree. It was planted in 1845, and its follicles covers 45 metres in perimeter and has aerial roots growing down from the top, which gives the illusion of a small forest, but looking up you realize everything is coming from the same enormous tree. I so badly wanted to stand in front of that tree like a little girl and have my photo taken just for the sake of understanding and showing its size, but I am no person to take selfies, and even less someone to ask others to take pictures of me.
The rest of the garden featured tons of cacti and weird funny plants that I don’t know the name of and the garden is for sure a visit worth.
All of this was three same tree - and the root you see going across the ground on the left was more than 1.5 meters tall - that’s almost 5ft for you americans.
Lots of fallos shaped cacti in this Botanical Garden - also notice the one in front of the three, which was about 5 meters tall and look a bit like a Demogorgan from Stranger Things to be honest.
3rd Clip - Catacombe dei Cappuccini di Palermo
I had never before been to a catacombs and this will probably also be the last time, because as fascinating as it was, it was also very disturbing to see baby skeletons - so much, that I had to leave before completing the full tour because my stomach was turning itself into a fast spinning pool of everything bad.
The entrance shares space with a the Catholic church Convento Frati Minori Cappuccini in which a First Holy Communion was about to take place, so a stream of people flogged into the church in formal wear, children wearing suits, white dresses and even veils. I didn’t dare to take any pictures because it felt very disrespectful to this very formal and heavily religious event about to take place.
Walking down the stairs into the underground catacombs was cool and felt sacred. I was not allowed to take images, and people were very quiet and respectful while they slowly walked around and took everything in. The skeletons were divided into section of profession, age and status. They were placed in several rows above each other and the top row hung out slightly above where you walk. Maybe you can imagine if that felt nice and cosy or not.
Images from the catacombre are borrowed from Google.
Turning point - The Palazzo Butera
On my last day in Palermo I more or less accidentally discovered that the large Palazzo that I had crossed a few times earlier that week, was in fact a renovated palazzo now turned art-exhibition. And off I sprinted. On my way there I crossed though an antique marked in a square and thought I would retur after the palazzo and before heading to the airport late in the afternoon. Alas, I ended up spending so much time at the palazzo that the marked had closed when I returned.
The palazzo! Exclamation point yes, because this was the absolute highlight of this whole trip. Even after being that big tree back there!
Never have I ever experienced such perfection as this exhibition space and collection. Every little corner and detail had been through such care and consideration that I would be in awe to meet the people who had put this together.
The Palazzo art space begins with a beautiful courtyard with palm-trees, a massive banana-tree and red and yellow giant flowers spread out over the ground - but carefully arranged during the day by some of the caretakers. The exhibition has no art name plates, so you will have to refer to the guidebook for artist, but in fact just experiencing the artwork without the distractions was quite supreme.
The spaces are large, ceilings are high as high can be, the restaurantions of the Palazzoo is done in such perfect combination between modern and Sicilian Palozzo style, you can’t even imagine it properly. In some places in the floor, where three roots had grown up, the restauration had included that in the new layout and used it to add another natural art piece into the collection. An art collection which is owned by the two art connoisseurs Francesca and Massimo Valsecchio.
On the second floor there are places where the ceiling reveals the roof constructions, and on the top floor you can explore that same roof from above, before finally walking out to a small platform at the roof and enjoy the 360 degree view of Palermo.
Worlds cannot properly explain the perfection of this place. After several hours of exploring and a glass of wine and a small lunch at the terrace, I was so utterly full and exhausted from impressions that I simply couldn’t take in more. Instead of trying to explain this any further I will add a few images that gives a glimpse into the pure beauty. And really this is just a few of the 300+ pictures I took of the Palazzo. This place is worth a trip in itself for any art lovers out there. Wow oh wow!
Epilogue
Palermo had me on a rollercoaster from excitement, to disappointment, to the most exuberant I have ever been about an exhibition. And for an avid art lover, that is a pretty big accomplishment I will say! I went home to Copenhagen will a full heart and wanted to remodel my entire apartment into a modern day scandi-palazzo style and regretted not having just one more day in the city to explore it. I found that most of the really interesting things in the city, was not part of any guidebooks, but places I stumbled upon accidentally.
Palermo is a must visit and I would recommend about 4-5 days as a good amount of time. Come for the Godfather vibe, stay mostly away from the Main Street, and enjoy the art scene and small wonders of the smaller streets and nooks of the city.
Now my trip was outside peak opera season, but for anyone going I would recommend checking up on operas playing while you are there. That would really have put the cherry on top of this Palermo ice-cream ❤️.
Thank you for reading!
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