The obscurity of the previous night was banished by a glorious sunrise, and we stood on the balcony of the apartment, looking out over steeples and domes, tiled roofs, and below us, winding cobblestone streets where people began to go about their day. It was time for coffee.
We walked past still-closed shops to find the small cafe recommended the night before by our host. The colors and styles of the buildings were reminiscent of Rome, but where Rome was grand, Palermo seemed grittier, worn, rougher. The light off the sea bathed the stuccoed walls and Baroque facades in a stronger brilliance, while casting the tiny alleys into deep shadow. Old Italian men wearing dark caps stood in groups, bantering, while younger men and even small boys raced by on Vespas and motorcycles. There were few women anywhere, but many tall dark-skinned men also walked or gathered in groups, looking restless, some in western dress and others in North African attire: tunics over flowing robes, small round caps. In the side streets near us we passed small shops selling halal kebabs, couscous, Indian food. None of these people spoke to us, or even looked at us closely, and I tried not to appear to be paying much attention to them. We had never been in southern Italy before, and certainly not in Sicily. The first 24 hours in a new place are for acclimation: getting the lay of the land, and also trying to take its emotional temperature: what's going on, what's safe and what isn't, where should we walk, is there hostility toward tourists, westerners, North Americans; how are the women behaving, are people walking alone, what does their body language say? We have pretty good antennae, and had read up on these places ahead of time, but a lot of the things that create comfort or discomfort are subtle, and even personal. As we walked, I knew that we were both paying close attention, and that we'd compare notes soon.
After we crossed Via Maqueda, a main street that runs, uncharacteristically, straight and parallel to the harbor, we found ourselves in Piazza Bellini, a broad paved square bordered by two historic churches. It had just begun to rain. Cafe Stagnitta was around the back of the piazza, and we entered the typical, rather elegant Italian coffee-bar: narrow, with mirrors on the walls, a glass display case filled with sweets or sandwiches beneath a high counter, several busy clerks in aprons, and a huge, shiny espresso machine. You stand at the counter to drink your espresso and eat a pastry, or pay more to sit at a table. We stood, taking the place of two regular patrons who were just leaving. There were no tables in this tiny room anyway; probably in better weather there were several out on the piazza. I ordered my usual cafe latte decaffeinato and a small lemon-filled pastry, while J. asked for an espresso and a croissant filled with green pistachio cream - a Sicilian specialty. The small white cups clinked in their saucers; the barista smiled at us; the coffee was dark, rich, delicious. I scraped the last bits of foam from my cup with the small spoon, and we paid our bill and stepped out into the drizzling rain, careful not to slip on the slick marble pavement.
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What had brought us to Sicily? Perhaps it was J.'s obsession with pizza, at first: we kept trying to get to Naples but always seemed to end up in other destinations. I had become even more curious about southern Italy after reading Elena Ferrante's four Neapolitan novels. There was our attraction to volcanos: Vesuvius, of course, south of Naples, but here on Sicily, the continually-active Mt. Etna. But it was the intersection of Sicily's history with our own that had sealed this decision. For me, there was the fact that this island was a major part of Magna Graecia -- the Greeks had established city-states here in the 5th century BC, and fought nearly continual wars with their great rival, Carthage, on the north coast of Africa, close to Sicily's southern coast; I was anxious to visit these ruins. For Jonathan, the Palermo area in particular had unique architectural monuments that blended the Norman kings' Christian religion and Byzantine art with the traditional work of native Arab craftsmen -- the island was mostly inhabited by Arab Muslims when the Normans arrived. Two of those Arab-Norman sites were right here, in this piazza.
We stood outside these buildings for a while, under a tall bell tower covered with geometric Arab motifs, and a towering date palm laden with branches of dark orange fruit. Dark pink bougainvillea bloomed in a courtyard behind a wrought iron fence; along the walls were agaves, palmettos. Where exactly were we: Damascus? Spain? Mexico? Florida?
A narrow path led along the side of the wall, above the piazza, and there we found the entrance to the smaller building, the Church of St. Cataldo, a straight-sided cube with three red domes. St. Cataldo, named after the medieval Irish Saint Cathaldus who came through southern Italy, was built in 1154 by Maio of Bari. Maio was magnus ammiratus ammiratorum or "great admiral of admirals" under the Norman King William I of Sicily , a title derived from the Arabic word "amir": he was an admiral but also a chancellor who wielded a great deal of influence. His primary legacy was to complete the centralisation and consolidation of Sicily that the earlier kings had begun, and he was responsible for a treaty that finally put an end to conflict between Sicily and the Pope. Maio is described variously as a totally honest, upright man and a corrupt womanizer who was the Queen's lover and involved in a plot to kill the King; in any event, he was assassinated not long after this church was built, and for that reason the interior was never finished.
The feeling, as we sat down under the stone domes, was of coolness, solidity, and immense calm. Two young women sold tickets in front of a curtained doorway, and serious conservation work was quietly proceeding in the altar area by white-coated technicians. Another couple sat quietly in wooden chairs. A middle-aged man paid, entered, took one look around, and loudly demanded his money back -- "This is all there is?" he shouted, in a mixture of English and Italian. "And it's under construction? You expect people to pay to see this?" The older of the two women politely and firmly refused to refund his money. "You have entered, you have to pay," she said, "It is how we finance the conservation." He finally gave up and stormed out; the rest of us exchanged amused glances.
The altar itself was original, as was the elaborate mosaic floor, but many of the interior decorations had been lost over the centuries, when the building had been used for other purposes such as a post office. The red color of the domes was probably an error of restoration from the 1800s.
Later I was glad we had seen this church first, both because of the emotional intensity that derived, I thought, from its simplicity, and because we could see the architectural structure so much more clearly than in interiors encrusted with Byzantine mosaics. The windows here, in particular, stood out for their varying, geometric Arab lattice motifs, which gave a lightness that contrasted with the massive arches. I had never been in such a place; Jonathan said it reminded him very much of buildings he had seen in Damascus.
Next: Byzantine mosaics, and King Roger of Sicily.
The shot of the inside of the church is utterly transporting; thank you!
Posted by: Duchesse | December 15, 2017 at 08:30 AM