Traduzione in italiano by AltaVista Babelfish
We stayed in Santa Ninfa, where our painter and scuptor friend Nino Cordio was born, all built new after the 1968 earthquake destroyed a lot of the town. We were hosted by wonderful people, and had dinners every night with some of the most important people in town, the people who get big things done, who were also the wonderful ones. We spent our first morning in the 30th anniversary celebration of a cooperative of construction companies, CELI, and we sat through speeches, and attended a stand-up luncheon in the parking lot. The President of the Region of Sicily was there and he made the longest and most interesting speech.
The day trips were the best part: Greek temples at Selinunte and Segesta, with miles of gorgeous panorama of mountains, hills and sea. Unbelievable, and moving. We also visited the quarries where the sections of the columns were carved right out of the marble deposits to make the Selinunte temples. After Segesta, we went to the lovely medieval town of Erice and wandered around like tourists, enjoying ourselves, looking at Sicilian ceramics.
We visited Gibellina, another new city, close to Santa Ninfa, and rebuilt in this new location in the plain after the 1968 earthquake destroyed the hillside town. The new town had invited contemporary artists to create sculptures for public spaces. But then we drove from there up a little hill to see "Casa di Stefano", a complex of restored buildings which had an eclectic museum, an enormous grain storage barn turned into a contemporary exhibition space (about 1,000 sq. meters), and a row of 8 fabulous artist studios with upstairs lofts, almost all of them empty. The exciting thing about this complex was that it was all beautifully united, the contemporary and the old architecture, the space and the landscape, by beautiful design.
Another day Marsala and the Island of Mozia, where Dionysius from Siracusa wiped out a city of 15,000 Phoenicians in the 4th c. B.C. It was so great walking along the beach on Mozia, looking at the ruins and trying to figure out the life of this civilization about 2500 years ago. Our "guide" that day was Nino di Vita, a poet who lives in Marsala; it was cool having an informal "tour guide" who was personally struggling with questions about the past on this island, and we could question history together. Then we and our friends Nino and Graziella Cordio went to the poet's home, where his wife served us homemade granitas, made with their own lemons and strawberries. Another day we went to visit a foundry Nino was checking out to cast his pomegranate-fountain for Santa Ninfa's piazza. Later we stopped to see a Norman-Arab church/mosque in Trapani. It was small and totally gorgeous. What exquisite proportions, and silent, elegant design. We saw two other similar structures, the most beautiful was on our last day in Palermo.
In the morning before leaving Santa Ninfa for Palermo, we had breakfast at an abandoned railroad station, part of which was taken over by a couple of shepherds who make cheese. They served us bowls full of hot ricotta - the "curd" still swimming in the "whey" - that we dropped pieces of fresh, hot semolina bread in, and ate it like soup. The air smelled like sheep everywhere, but they were out somewhere and I couldn't see them. Just the shepherds and the doggies were there. One of our hosts gave us a two-day old pecorino cheese to take home. We drove to the old Gibellina, the one that was totally destroyed in the earthquake, to see a contemporary work by Burri, but this piece was very moving. Burri had sectioned off the part of the destroyed city where the most deaths had occurred, and made a memorial monument by covering the blocks of rubble that used to be houses in white cement, like capping broken teeth, but like a white veil going down a swath of hillside. There were still paths where the streets used to be. It was very eerie and saddening to look at it; you have to see it. Then we drove to Poggio Reale, another town that was destroyed by earthquake, but the entire town was evacuated and abandoned, with the houses severely damaged, but still standing. We walked through this ghost town like one walks through Pompeii. You could still see the decorative painting on the walls and ceilings inside the houses, even chandeliers, through the walls that had been torn away by the earthquake. This was also set in a magnificent panorama. Very eerie.
Finally, in Palermo, we went to Monreale to see the Byzantine church with it's amazing mosaics covering the entire interior. Then we saw the most beautiful Norman-Arab church of all, with its 5 red domes, and the Archeological Museum, which is what I was waiting for. Mamma mia, what a collection. Great bas-reliefs and high reliefs from the temples of Selinunte (as well as many statuettes and little artifacts that got redundant). Sections of actual walls of caves with prehistoric engravings (graffiti) of animals and men. One of the best Greek vase collections I've ever seen, and it was in excellent condition. Happy after that experience, we went to the airport.
When we returned to Montecastello di Vibio, the valley was shrouded in such a thick fog, that Todi seemed to be a desert island in an undulating sea.
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