Palermo in the rain
A sea of umbrellas
Bad weather today
Rainfall in Sicily
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Tag Archives: sicily
Nothing changes
Palermo
It is 2018, and I am eating ice cream in Italy after the ladies in my family have just visited a shop selling brassieres.
60 years earlier, aged 6, I was doing the same thing. We used to visit Florence annually during my childhood. Every year, my mother used to buy her bras in Florence at a shop close to an excellent ice cream shop called “Perché no?” (IE Why not?). After every visit to the bra store, I was rewarded with an ice cream.
Now, here in Palermo, the same thing has happened six decades later?
Nothing changes.
Moorish
Moorish influence in Sicilian church architecture of the Norman era can be explained by the presence of Moorish craftsmen in Norman Sicily.
Guernica
A picture based on Guernica by Picasso in a bar in Palermo, Sicily. Booze and bombing, an odd juxtaposition.
An Albanian outpost
In about 1480, Albanians fleeing from the Ottoman army that was invading Albaia were given land in Sicily, just South of Palermo.
They built the town of Piana degli Albanesi on this land, and it is still thriving. Most if the inhabitants speak an archaic form of Albanian as well as Italian and preserve many Albanian traditions.
This picture shows a bust of Skanderbeg in Piana degli Albanesi. George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, national hero of the Albanians, resisted the Ottoman army for about 25 years, saving western Europe from becoming part of the Ottoman Empire.
Multi-cultural heritage
Sicily: For centuries, a meeting place of diverse cultures. Albanians, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, Normans, Spanish, Italians … etc
yamey 