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Europe » Italy » Sicily – Palermo

Sicily – Palermo

April 2016

Sicily’s largest city, and its capital since the 900s, is a crowded, vibrant place. Pleasures include people-watching, strolling through lively markets, exploring the city’s old churches and Norman palace, stopping in cafes for delectable things to eat, and watching daily life unfold at street level and in the balconies above.

Fish for sale at a street market in Palermo

Chopping up swordfish steaks

AJ contemplates all of the different kinds of olives

Foosball tables in a streetside cafe

Street art in Palermo

This ground-floor workshop looks timeless

You never know what you'll find during a walk in Palermo: a group conversing . . .

. . . or men washing a horse in the street

Courtyard of the palace of the Norman counts of Sicily, now home to the Sicilian parliament

An 18th-century state carriage

Mosaics in the Cappella Palatina, the private chapel of Count Roger II built in the 1130s

Mosaics in the chapel floor (the purple is a rare ancient stone called porphery)

The base of this urn is made of porphyry, probably taken from a Roman site and reused

The ceiling of the chapel reflects the designs of the Arab craftsmen whom the Normans conquered on Sicily

Palermo has some beautiful sweet shops

We ate gelato every day; the pistacho variety is a Sicilian specialty

Another Sicilian specialty is huge arancini (balls of yellow saffron rice stuffed with meat, cheese, or vegetables and fried)

A grand cafe

Two old churches (one with domes like those used by the Saracens) in Piazza Bellini were the site of a wedding when we walked by

Many Sicilian churches are full of Baroque decoration run amok

The roots of a big banyan tree in a tropical garden near our apartment

View from our apartment balcony

A fruit vendor on the street below

Residents of apartments high above buy from vendors using baskets