These old photos of Palermo are from a volume in the John L. Stoddard's Lectures series, "Illustrated and embellished with views of the world's famous places and people, being the identical discourses delivered during the past eighteen years under the title of the Stoddard Lectures," dating from 1905. My friend Jen B., who knows how much I appreciate old books, gave me the set and I've been thoroughly enjoying looking through them. Palermo may have changed much in the last 115 years, but its panoramic setting has not. Stoddard wrote, "...the Sicilian capital lay glittering in an amphitheatre of imposing, violet-tinted mountains, which close about Palermo to the sea, and form the noble arc of an almost perfect semicircle, of which the coast line is the chord. "
Palermo was founded in the 8th century BC by the Phoenicians, but its name is derived from the Greeks,
Panormos ("port for all") as at the time the rest of Sicily was nearly all Greek. It's an absolutely fascinating city, with tons of energy and layer upon layer of history; the word 'palimpsest' is most accurate here perhaps as nowhere else in the world -- there are so many visible traces of all the people who conquered Sicily. In their
Time Traveler's Guide: Norman-Arab-Byzantine Palermo, Monreale & Cefalù, Louis Mendola and Jacqueline Alio refer to "polyglot Palermo" of the 12th century, and they note that "In this city history reaches its hand out to us at every corner. Here the streets talk. They speak the language of diversitude, of Sicanians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Jews, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Aghlabids, Fatimids, Kalbids, Normans, Swabians, Angevins and Catalans." Barbara Grizzuti Harrison writes in
Islands of Italy that "...in the center of Palermo, Spanish baroque and Moorish and Byzantine and Norman dazzlingly coexist: whoever conquered -- Berber emir, Byzantine, Spanish viceroy -- left his mark in stone." Harrison adds that the city is "fabulous, intoxicating," and I completely agree. For too long now Palermo has been underrated and bypassed. Its image of a dirty, Mafia-driven, unsafe city was once valid, but that image hasn't been true in years. Palermo isn't, however, coiffed and perfect. Rather, its charm lies in its jumbled pattern of beauty and decay side by side. It's common to walk by gorgeous buildings that are next to vacant storefronts covered with graffiti, and beyond that chic boutiques and hip bars next to a hole-in-the-wall produce vendor, and beyond that an open space given over to weeds surrounding a building bombed during World War II. It reminds me of Naples and Genoa (both cities I also really like), and I find it all really refreshing and appealing.
Palermo also has an embarrassment of riches in its art and architecture, and its Teatro Massimo is the largest opera house in Italy; not for nothing was Palermo European Cultural Capital in 2018. There is a great deal to see and do, and the city deserves more than a cursory visit. As writer Dan Hofstadter observed in '
Italy In Full' (
Condé Nast Traveler, 2009), Palermo is "so filled with treasures that many of its people have grown oblivious of them. There is a sense here that only profusion expresses devotion, that a thousand pictures and statues surely grace a church more handsomely than a mere ten or twenty."
This post will focus on
Informazioni Pratiche (Practical Information) and the next one will focus on everything else about Palermo.
Flights: It's impossible, of course, to predict what airline travel will be like once it has resumed, and which airlines will even still be in business; but if it happens that United's direct flights to Palermo from Newark are no longer an option and you have to take two flights to reach Palermo, I highly recommend Emirates (again, assuming it's still around), which had regular departures from New York to Milan (for fares that were less than flights to Rome). It's a top-notch airline, the service is great, and, at least last fall, there was no fee to check bags. Now, my husband and I had already decided that we didn't want to check bags -- years ago, we'd read somewhere that "there are two kinds of luggage: checked and lost" -- so this Emirates feature didn't immediately appeal to us; but when we looked at the choices for flights from Milan to Palermo and had decided upon Easy Jet, it
did appeal, and here's why: first, we never check bags in a situation where they're (supposedly) going to be unloaded from one airplane and loaded onto another. We would be collecting our luggage in Milan and then going to the Easy Jet counter, where they would be checked in separately. Easy Jet doesn't have the same luggage size requirements as Emirates (they're smaller), but it does have a "hands-free" feature that for a small fee (the equivalent of about 10 dollars), passengers can check a bag as long as it doesn't exceed the weight requirement. Since Easy Jet's definition of "carry on" is stricter than that for Emirates, I wouldn't have been able to carry both my handbag and a tote bag, so the "hands-free" option seemed to be a good one (the alternative was to pay the official checked bag fee, and at $50 per flight per person, this would have added $200 to the total, nearly more than the total cost of the round-trip tickets).
However, when we arrived at the Easy Jet counter in Milan, the attendant told us I had to put my tote bag
inside of my checked bag and Jeff had to put his day pack
inside of his bag -- she said we could take them out again before the bags were sent through on the conveyor belt but we had to prove that they would fit inside (this was
nowhere in the fine print). We'd purposefully packed light so this wasn't a problem (but it could have been), so
caveat emptor: it is
possible to travel with only one carry-on bag, but it sure isn't easy. And
regarding the definition of a carry-on bag: the luggage companies need to coordinate with the airlines because the measurements are not uniform among airlines or the luggage manufacturers. The so-called standard measurement of 9" x 14" x 22" does not apply to every airline (make sure to check) and the measurements of some carry-on bags I looked at differ by a few or a lot of inches, so at check-in, travelers risk being charged a fee to check bags if the airline representative decides to enforce the rule.
The Best Reads: The two reads I recommend are the Time Traveler's Guide by Louis Mendola and Jacqueline Alio I mentioned above (Trinacria Editions, 2017), and
Palermo: Travels in the City of Happiness by Allan Langdale (publisher not indicated; it could be self-published, 2015). If you've read my previous posts you know I hold Mendola and Alio in very high regard, and I think their
Time Traveler's Guide is
essenziale. They provide far more details about Palermo's history and the city's major sites than any guidebook (though they note that their emphasis is "the
medieval history and architecture" of sites, so any modern additions to, for example, Palermo Cathedral, are generally ignored). They also write very engagingly, and the chapters devoted to Monreale Abbey and the nearby seaside town of C
efalù are excellent. Allan Langdale's book is a series of chapters based on a week he spent in Palermo in 2014 (he'd also visited previously), and while there are some details of his trip that aren't, frankly, that interesting, the majority of his reflections are quite thought-provoking and relevant. Langdale writes in his Introduction that there was much written about Palermo in the 1990s that was true and unpleasant; the accounts "didn't describe my Palermo, which was a city blessed with wondrous art and architecture. Whenever I encouraged people to visit they would always raise their eyebrows and ask me about the mafia. It was as if I'd suggested they take a vacation to the Gaza strip. Yet today you're far less likely to be a victim of crime in Palermo than in many American cities. As for crossing the street, well, it is Italy after all."
Accommodations: As I mentioned in the very first Sicily post, for our first three nights in Palermo we stayed in one of the self-catered apartments at
Butera 28, in the Palazzo Lanza Tomasi. There are 4 Standard apartments (all with 1 bedroom), 6 Superior apartments (4 with one bedroom, 2 with two bedrooms), and 2 Deluxe (both have sweeping views over the bay of Palermo, and apartment 9 has a grand piano!), and the palazzo is located in the Kalsa quarter (from
al Khalesa in Arabic), named during the the Arab period in Palermo's history, which began in the year 827. I'll be writing much more about the neighborhood, the palazzo, Lampedusa's
The Leopard, and 'Cooking With the Duchess' separately, so for now, I'll only briefly share more here about the unique location of Butera 28.
This painting (and the images that follow) are from the Butera 28 website; in the painting, the palazzo is the long yellow building on the right side. I don't know who painted the picture or the time period it depicts, but the building dates from the second half of the 17th century, and it was built on top of the Spanish wall. The wall was originally built in the early 1400s, when it bordered the coastline, which over centuries gradually receded about 55 yards. Here's a contemporary photo of the same view:
And here are two photos of the sea-facing side of the palazzo and the public walkway that runs along the length of it:
Beyond the walkway is the busy Foro Italico Umberto I roadway -- until 1948, the shore ran along what is now the middle of this street -- and the grassy park area beyond, right next to the shore, was built on top of all the debris leftover from the buildings that were reduced to rubble during the Allied bombing of 1943.
We stayed in Apartment 6, pictured here...
...and like all the other charming apartments, it has colorful tile floors, period furniture, nice artwork, Wi-Fi, a/c, heating, washing machine, tv, and basic kitchen facilities. Nearly everything in the historic center of Palermo is within walking distance, and plenty of guests stay here who don't take the cooking class. The most recent rates range from 85 euros to 165 euros for Standard rooms; 180 euros to 265 euros for Superior rooms; and the two Deluxe rooms are 240 euros per night. Weekly rates are available for all room types. Butera 28 is a member of
Dimore Storiche Italiane (Historic Houses of Italy), one of my favorite accommodation groups, with a variety of lovely palaces, castles, villas, and farms, plus restaurants, parks and gardens, and wine cellars.
When we returned to Palermo after visiting other parts of Sicily, we stayed at
BB22: Charming Rooms & Apartments. The BB22 concept was created by Patricia Marchetti, originally from Milan, which she and her husband left in 2000. They bought the Palazzo Pantelleria-Varvaro, built in 1500 and located on the tiny via Pantelleria that's at an angle with largo Cavalieri di Malta, behind the church of San Domenico, and set about renovating it into a stylish B&B. Characteristics that many B&Bs share -- dated or shabby rooms, fraying carpets, thin walls, skimpy breakfasts -- are nowhere to be found at BB22. Marchetti strives to create a special atmosphere, with smart, stylish, design-forward guest rooms. I neglected to take photos of my own, but here a few just below from the website, of my room and bathroom, and the room of a friend who met us in Palermo at BB22:
A brief history of this building is that it was once known as the Palazzo Requesens as its construction is attributed to Berengario Requesens, a member of an illustrious Spanish family. The palace was sold at auction in 1835 and bought by Francesco Varvaro Querola. After World War II, it was divided among his sons, and then it landed in the possession of his nephew, Francesco Varvaro Patti. Marchetti opened BB22 in 2004 with 7 rooms, each original, each very comfortable and furnished with quality pieces. Marchetti's passion for interior design is evident in the way she mixes contemporary pieces with those that have a flea market feel, as well as her love of texture in the bed linens, chair upholstery, towels and bath mats. The bathrooms are appointed with very thoughtful items other than the usual sets of toiletries. Breakfast is served in a bright living room (that shares space with a small reception area and a bar) and is a fairly generous spread, with good choices for all tastes and diets. The living room opens out onto an enclosed, glassed-in terrace providing views over the historic center of Palermo, and this is a really nice spot to relax at any time of day but especially late at night -- there is an honor bar/refrigerator stocked with an assortment of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. BB22 is not a hotel and therefore the reception desk is not open around the clock; hours are 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 and from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. -- if you arrive outside of those times, the staff will accommodate your entry into the building, and at any time you have only to call the wonderful Francesca, who is incredibly vivacious, helpful, and super-knowledgeable. Everyone who I corresponded with before my arrival was prompt and attentive, especially Costanza Paladino, who was also especially patient during my initial stay and then again when I returned after a trip to Pantelleria. All the restaurant reservations and airport transfers I requested were handled flawlessly.
In addition to BB22, Marchetti opened the BB22 Palace, a few hundred meters away inside the Moncada Palace, as well as apartments that may be rented separately or as a whole (for 8 people total). Here are some photos:
The BB22 staff can arrange special experiences for guests, including a half-day visit (including a cooking class and countryside tour) to the Susafa farmhouse in the Madonie natural park area, about an hour and a half from Palermo. Patricia Marchetti has been described as "the mind and the heart of BB22," and I wouldn't be surprised to learn, after this Corona virus is truly behind us, that she opens another creative lodging. The most recent rates, which include breakfast, range from 80 euros in low season to 180 euros in high season for BB22 and the BB22 Palace, and for the apartments, rates range from 150-200 euros (2 people); 200-250 euros (3 to 4 people); and 700 to 1,000 euros (for a maximum of 8 people).
Other Palermo lodgings to consider:
Villa Igiea, new to the Rocco Forte hotel group, just opened in 2019 with great fanfare. Much of what's been written about the beautiful, landmark building is in the vein of, "finally, Palermo has a true luxury hotel". Originally a private villa owned by an English admiral, Cecil Domville, it was purchased by Ignazio Florio, of the very successful Palermitano family of the 19th century (the Florios were involved in several industries, notably Marsala;
Le Cantine Florio was founded in 1832 and has since been sold, but is still a leading label). Ignazio wanted to turn the villa, overlooking the Bay of Palermo, into a luxury hotel and he named it Igiea after his daughter, who was named after Hygieia, the Greek goddess of sanitation and health. Ignazio hired Ernesto Basile, the pioneer of Sicily's
Stile Liberty, the equivalent of Art Nouveau, for the renovation and Basile worked on it from 1899-1901. More recently the Villa had been owned by Hilton and then the AccorHotels group. In its Rocco Forte incarnation, the 66 rooms and suites are designed by Olga Polizzi (Forte's sister and Director of Design for the group) and Paolo Moschino, of Nicholas Haslam Studios. If you want luxury in Palermo, there's no better place to find it, especially since the
Grand Hotel et des Palmes, on via Roma, is closed for renovation.
Palazzo Planeta, apartments owned by the Planeta wine estate family (more about Planeta in an upcoming post). The 7 apartments (Il Capo,
Ballarò, Al Borgo, Vucciria, Kemonia, Kalsa, and Olivella) are in the family's palazzo on the fashionable via Principe Belmonte. The palazzo dates from the early 1900s and overlooks the piazza Ignazio Florio. Two photos from the website are here:
The unusual-looking pieces in the facade here are actually pieces of a bomb from World War II. The 1943 Allied bombing destroyed a large part of the building, and the family wished to preserve "this harsh warning of the horrors of war, by conserving it in our collective memory." A few photos below, also from the site, are of the light-filled and colorful apartments:
The apartments are of different configurations and sizes, and Planeta's personal city tour advisor, Arianna Patti, provides special experiences for guests.
Stanze al Genio, on via Giuseppe Garibaldi in the Kalso quarter, is one of the most unique lodgings anywhere: 4 guestrooms are inside of the
Museo delle Maioliche, a wonderful ceramic tile museum (more on that in my next post). The building itself is the historic Palazzo Torre-Pirajno, which dates from the 16th century, and the museum takes its name from the Genio (Italian for genius) fountain in the nearby piazza Rivoluzione. When I visited the house-museum, there was a considerable amount of construction going on in the street level space, but once I entered the museum on the first floor
piano nobile, it was whole different world, quiet and beautiful. Here are a few pictures of the guestrooms from the site (note that each room accommodates two people, and the lodging is not suitable for young children; breakfast is served in the pretty
Sala Grande):
Lastly, car rental: we ended up renting a car at the airport and driving into Palermo, but I'm not necessarily recommending that. The drive itself is not difficult and the roads are well marked, but we parked it in the garage at the Palazzo Lanza-Tomasi for three days before we used it again. However, I admit that when we left for Taormina on the fourth day, all we had to do was put our luggage in the car and drive off. Note that it may seem like parking on the streets of Palermo is a haphazard affair, but it isn't. Do not think you can squeeze into a spot on the street while you check into your hotel. In fact, the streets are monitored by camera, and by the time you return to your car a ticket will have been issued. Alert the staff at your hotel if you'll have a car when you check in, and they will inform you of what to do.
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