More Normandy

We left off last time sitting in a lovely restaurant in rural France, watching the dusk descend over the Seine. After a good night's rest, continue your tour the next day. Get the GPS programmed. Head for Rouen, one of the most delightful cities I’ve ever walked around. We parked the car near the Hotel de Ville, and rushed to examine the magnificent church next door. Was this the famous Cathedral? No – “merely” a non-guide-book-rated abbey. An impressive ‘second-string’ edifice! Off we wandered through the medieval streets of the old town, heading towards an impressive spire – is this the Cathedral? No – another exquisite church, but an ‘also-ran’. On we searched – a wonderful medieval clock, another magnificent church, ‘faience’ in the shop windows, another spire, a Norman tower. Pretty impressive ‘also-rans’ in this town!

No.....

No.....

Yes!

Monet interprets Rouen Cathedral

Eventually the Cathedral was located, its magnificence rather subdued by renovation scaffolding, and the fact that it was closed until 2 o’clock. But the scale of its facade, its square Norman towers, and its famous cast-iron spire (the tallest in Europe) told us that we had found le premiere site. So this was how magnificent you had to be to reduce all those other great buildings to ‘also-rans’!

Across the square in front of the Cathedral were half-timbered shop fronts, one of which used to house a haberdasher (now the tourist office). Monet used to rent a change-room-sized space, curtained off, in the upstairs window of the haberdasher; and from there he would, somewhat obsessively, paint the facade of Rouen Cathedral in all its changing light moods. He painted it over 30 times.

Joan of Arc site, Rouen

But, not waiting for the 2 o’clock opening, we continued our tour of Rouen and found a rather interesting modern church, with a high steel cross in its forecourt. This marks the site of the burning of Saint Joan of Arc, the Christian martyr. The fish market is next door now. 

Life goes on, and so did we, setting off to see what the Norman coast had to offer. What it offered were two very different experiences. Exquisite Honfleur is a fishing village, with a curious church made entirely of wood (built by the shipwrights of the town), cute shops, and a wonderful waterfront lined with bistros which will feed you. Fish, naturellement.

Honfleur

Fresh!

Our credentials

Further along the coast, we joined the rich and famous at the playground of Deauville – think casino, film festival, golf; bring your designer shades, your Gucci, and your poodle. Wait – we had two poodles with us, so we were cool. Deauville has a very upscale end of town, and a very delightful shopping area, and – its main claim to fame – a proper beach. You know, long, sandy, no pebbles and grit, and so on. Since it was still a little early in the season the beach was not in full swing, the colourful umbrellas were still furled, making a lovely David Hockney-esque view. We sat at a beach cafe and ate ice cream. One of us – she shall remain nameless – ordered something green called a “diablo”. It was that kind of afternoon.

Deauville: a real beach

Beach changing cabins at Deauville

'Diablo'

Palermo

Where am I?

Mosaics in Cappella Palantina

Name the capital city of Sicily. Yes, it’s Palermo. How did you know? And it is a beautifully situated capital city too, strung around a handsome horse-shoe harbour, with steep attractive mountainsides behind. The city centre divides into the centro storico and the attractive 19^th century streets that sprang up after Garibaldi rode into town and liberated everyone. It has two theatres, nice shopping streets, lots of characterful little trattatorias, a big cathedral, remnants of Norman city walls, and Sicily’s parliament. It also has THE most amazing collection of mosaics this side of Ravenna – some say that Palermo’s mosaics rival the famous ones of Ravenna. I’ll need to go to Ravenna to check this claim, I can see that.

Cappella Palantina: a riot of medieval colour

Sicily's Parliament Chamber

Marcella the guide is a local Palermo girl, and knew how to zero in on the best of the mosaics around town. The “must see” ones are in the Cappella Palatina, where you can also visit the (ex) Royal Apartments and the assembly room of the Sicilian government; and in Monreale, a separate town about 20 minutes drive up the hillside behind Palermo. In Monreale there is a magnificent cathedral and a Benedictine Abbey with a lovely cloister. The Monreale Cathedral was built by a Norman ruler of Sicily named William II, specifically to outshine the Cappella Palatina, which was built by his grandfather Roger II (Ruggerio II).

The cloister at Monreale

Monreale mosaics telling the Testament stories

Monreale. The Christ's hands are 7 metres apart.

Poolside at the Villa Igiea, Palermo

Villa Igiea. View from the room.

But you are sick of churches and monuments and ruins, you say? Then let’s go back to the divine Villa Igiea, which was originally built as a summer home for one of Sicily’s richest families (best not to ask), especially for one of the daughters of the family who was consumptive. The building later became a sanatorium, and is very pleasantly situated in lovely gardens on the bay. The decor is Art Deco and the rooms have tall windows that you can throw open to the sea breezes. On Easter Sunday there was live piano music, a special Easter Lunch menu, sunshine, and dining al fresco. Then there was the pool. Palermo’s climate is sub-tropical – the bougainvillea, hibiscus and frangipani were just beginning to flower. Was there something more you wanted?

Easter dolce

Easter Sunday Lunch

This completes my travel-related raves about Italy and Sicily – at least until I go back. Which seems inevitable.

Misteri di Trapani

Good Friday, Trapani, Sicily

One of the statues...very sad scenes.

It is a little late to wish you Buona Pasqua, but better late than never. I spent Good Friday this year in the towns of Trapani and Marsala in Western Sicily. All over southern Italy, towns large and small hold processions through the streets, usually bearing a life-sized figure of Christ in one of the stages of his Easter passion (the processions have Spanish origins and similar procession occur there too). It is community occasion, but also a funeral procession, and a deeply serious thing for the people. In Sicily, they do dark and tragic very well, and nowhere is this more evident than in their Good Friday processions. In Trapani, they have been doing their “Procession of the Mysteries” – Misteri di Trapani – since at least 1612.

Another band.

Trapani’s is a particularly famous procession, which lasts for 24 hours. Yes, you read right – from 2 pm on Holy Friday until 2 pm on Easter Saturday. Much as I knew you would want a full report of this event, I regret that I wasn’t up to staying for the whole 24 hours. I did arrive early enough in the proceedings to snag a position relatively close to the front of the crowd lining the barriers around a very small square in front of one of Old Trapani’s many churches, the Church of the Purgatorio. This is where the Easter statues spend the year, before they come forth for their annual airing, atop platforms decorated with fresh flowers, candles, ribbons and lace, and carried by teams of men. We in the crowd waited patiently while the local dignitaries assembled, the mayor donned his red, white and green sash, the head bishop arrived in his hot pink outfit, various ecclesiastical persons fluttered about in white frocks, and the local TV cameras waited on scaffolds. Eventually the bishop made a speech, a band formed up, and we had kick-off. The band wailed out a funeral dirge, like something out of ‘The Godfather’, various versions of which were to echo around the streets of Old Trapani for the next 24 hours.

Acolytes.

I watched, quite transfixed, as the first of the statues emerged from the church porch, inched over to one of the ecclesiastical gents, paused for a blessing, then slowly processed off down a side street. Each statue was not only carried by a large entourage of men, but was also accompanied by its own 40 or 50 piece band, a bevy of strange religious acolytes (children in red Klu Klux Klan hoods, young girls carrying sheathes of roses, little children with golden wings, serious boys with candles on poles), and – importantly – representatives of various town guilds carrying the banners and insignia of their Guild. It is said that the statues were granted in trust, by deeds, by the Brotherhood of St. Michael the Archangel, which instituted the rite in the late 16th century, to the members of the local Guilds in exchange for the promise to carry them during the passion procession every Good Friday. And a promise made is a promise kept, in Sicily.

Most impressive of all were the men carrying the statues. Each wore a suitably solemn expression, most were in suits and ties, or the uniforms of their guilds. There were young men and old men, all with a bowed-down stance and a long 24 hours ahead.

A serious business.

I watched for about an hour and a half, and saw five or six of the statues emerge. For each one, a new group of acolytes assembled, and a new band appeared (where all these people were marshalled remains a wonder). I was thinking that it might be time to move on, that perhaps most of the statues had now emerged, when a conversation in the crowd around me revealed that there are in fact twenty of them. Twenty! By my reckoning, it would take about six hours for them all to emerge and join the procession. I retired for a well-earned gelato.

'The littlest musician.'

A closer inspection...

It is always difficult to see much from amongst a crowd, but I certainly got a good dose of atmosphere, if no very good photos. The dirge-like band music haunts me still. But by good fortune (rather than good management) I had that morning happened upon another of Trapani’s churches, Sant’Agostino, a 14^th century church of the Knights Templar (the only building left in Sicily that is associated with the order). It was badly bombed in WWII, but on this particular Good Friday its claim to fame was that it housed an exhibition of the very wood, straw and canvas statues that are carried in the Easter parade. I was thus able to inspect some of these rather crude but uncannily life-like figures up close. They are traditionally made of light materials so that they are not too heavy to be carried all day.

There are some wonderful photographs of the Misteri di Trapani on this site.

Marsala's two statues, on the advertising poster.

A sorrowful sight.

Later in the day, I found myself on the sidewalks of Old Marsala, having successfully negotiated the parking question again (aren’t cars a pest when you want to leave them?) Here the locals didn’t try to compete with their close neighbour’s famous parade on the question of quantity. They went for quality. The parade here was just reaching the main street at about 4 pm (it too goes on for hours). Various members of various congregations were marching in matching purple (“if there’s purple, someone dies”, as we learnt a couple of blog posts ago); there were some dirge-like intonations and readings over a tinny loudspeaker, one band (only one!)...and two statues. I didn’t notice the dead Christ at first, because he was carried lying down. All attention was on the Madonna – carried high, and with her own purple velvet canopy carried aloft behind her.

And what Madonna she was! The artist had created an epitome of agony. All along the street, as she was carried past, grown men had tears in their eyes, everyone bent their heads and crossed themselves piously, an old lady watching from her balcony wept openly. I was a little aghast. The Madonna had a silver sword piercing her heart! Made the hairs stand up on the nape of my neck, I must say. Very Sicilian – the agony and hardship of all those centuries of oppression transmogrified into their religious observance.

Sad spectator, Marsala.

I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get any dinner in Marsala that evening. Everyone was so sad and lachrymose. But in the end, Marsala came through, with the fresh fish I by now demanded. Hopefully everyone would cheer up on Easter Sunday.

The Itinerario for the Trapani parade...24 hours

Here is quite a long clip of the parade in Trapani, very well filmed. Listen to a little to get the flavour of the dirge and the seriousness, and the involvement of the whole community in this centuries-old ritual.

Ah, Siracusa. Bellissimo!

Siracusa, Sicily

There is so much that is wonderful about Siracusa, on the south-eastern tip of Sicily, that I hardly know where to begin. One hour’s drive in the rental car south of the airport at Catania, and some rather rough small-town outskirts appear, soon to be replaced by some elegant looking facades and churches. Then soon, across a small bridge, is the island of Ortigia, and you are in Old Siracusa. You are far from the first visitor. Plato came here. More than once. It was colonised by Greeks from Corinth in the 8^th century BC. It is not possible to do justice to Siracusa in one short blog post, but I will try to give you a taste with this list:

Piazza Duomo, Siracusa

a.       Archimedes was born here in 287 BC. The famous mathematician and scientist from ancient times probably actually took his famous bath here: you may recall that it was while Archimedes was soaking in his bath that he worked out the principle that ensured his fame: that a body immersed in liquid is subject to a force equal to the weight of the volume of the liquid that has been displaced. It is said that he was so thrilled with this discovery that he leapt from his bath shouting “‘Eureka!” Today one of Ortigia’s delightful squares is named Piazza Archimedes. I sat in this piazza for an evening aperitif, and saw a bride, in her white gown, waiting at a bus stop.

Piazza Archemides

b.      The Greek Teatro in Siracusa is one of the largest and best preserved to have survived from antiquity. It has about 49 ranks of stone seats still in place (carved directly out of the rock) but is thought to have originally had 69 tiers. This means it would have held about 19,000 people, which is more than double the size of most surviving Roman theatres. Several rulers of ancient Siracusa were keen on drama, poetry and the arts, and plays performed here would have been by such stars of the ancient world as Bacchylides, Xenophon, Simonides, Pindar and Aeschylus. The Hollywood of 300 BC.

Imagine the shows here...

The Ear of Dyonisius

c.       Orecchio di Dionisio (“Dionysius’ Ear”): a huge and haunting limestone quarry where slaves would have hacked out limestone blocks for building. Its entrance is shaped like a human ear, many metres high. Inside, the excellent acoustic accidentally produced enabled a passing guide to treat us to a haunting Sicilian love song (before the school children came hurtling down to try out their lungs). The cave was given its nickname by the renaissance painter Caravaggio in the early 1600s, when he heard about Dionysius (a tyrant ruler of Siracusa) being able to hear the approach of his enemies because of the echo in the cave. Caravaggio was on the run at the time, having killed someone in one of his frequent lively rages. To the benefit of Siracusa, he left behind a number of paintings commissioned during his stay, one of which I discovered in a church on the Piazza Duomo.

      

And speaking of the Duomo – this has to be perhaps the most extraordinary church I have ever visited (and as you know if you’ve been following, I’ve visited a few spectacular ones recently). The Ortigia Duomo is a Christian Catholic church built on and around a Greek temple. Now, often churches were built on the same sites as pagan temples, but in this case the columns of the temple were preserved and incorporated into the church. The effect is spellbinding: the great columns of the pagan temple have been enclosed and roofed, and the space they mark out is once again a sacred space. The effect is difficult to describe; but the church interior is medieval with a minimal number of Baroque flourishes, so the overall effect is beautiful and soothing. And there are those great columns, standing where there have stood for about 2,300 years, doing the same job that they were originally carved and erected to do.

Inside the Duomo...incorporating the pagan.

e.      But the Baroque and the medieval mix intriguingly in the backstreets of Ortigia.  Tiny narrow streets date from medieval times, when the island was held by the Arabs; and later through the Baroque period when ornate balconies were added to many windows, almost meeting the opposite houses.  The balconies of Siracusa are a study in themselves. Wandering the alleyways of the Arabs, of the Jews, of the medieval merchants, of the little trattatorias and the rustic restaurants where the smell of cooking fish wafts out...

f.        The small island of Ortigia, attached to the ‘mainland’ of Siracusa by two short bridges, sits in the surprising harbour of Siracusa: a natural harbour, almost circular, with a narrow opening which was easily defended; explaining why Siracusa is where it is. There is also a strange effect where an underground fresh water stream emerges to meet and mingle with the salt water of the harbour in an odd and sudden combination. In a legend of antiquity, one of the nymphs of the hunter goddess Artemis, tormented by a hunter, was turned into a stream so that she might escape underground and re-emerge on the island of Ortigia as a freshwater fountain. Today the fountain of Arethusa can be visited, filled with a few ducks and some clumps of papyrus. Papyrus is another surprising find in Siracusa: lovely handmade papers can still be purchased.

g.       And Plato? He travelled to Siracusa a couple of times, and attempted to convince the tyrants then ruling the city-state that they had a great opportunity to adopt his model for government, based on his ‘Republic’. This didn’t go down very well with Dionysius, neither the Elder nor the Younger, and both ended up expelling Plato home to Athens. It could have been that bit about the ideal Republic being ruled by philosopher-kings.

Earth mother: feeding twins.

h.      The Archaeological Museum: with such a treasure-trove of ancient sites in Siracusa, they need a good archaeological museum, and they certainly have one. Every bit of pottery ever dug up here and in the surrounding countryside, from Neolithic times onwards, has been dusted off, identified, labelled and displayed in the most comprehensive museum of its kind that I’ve ever come across; all housed in an excellent and well-kept purpose designed building. There is also a huge display of bronze pieces, weapons, jewellery, utensils, raw metal, found in a Bronze Age hoard, one of the largest of the “Sicilian Hoards”.

But if Neolithic pottery shards aren’t your thing (and you can have too much of a good thing), the Greeks, and particularly Roman, finds from the archaeological site help to bring to life what you see of the foundational remains. At the outdoor site, in addition to the Greek Teatro, there is also a Roman amphitheatre (gladiators, naval battles, wild animals, cruelty and spectacle); and a massive alter build by one of the Siracusa tyrants named Hieron II in the 3^rd century BC, almost two kilometres long and big enough to slaughter and barbeque 460 bulls at once. As in many of these prosperous ancient cities, everybody’s villa and garden was decorated with statues and carvings and votive figures and fountains. Both the Greeks and then the Romans liked to surround themselves with art and beauty. Bits can be found preserved in the museum, some of them quite lovely.

Add to all these unusual and fascinating aspects of Siracusa an extremely lovely small hotel (Agila Ortigia), one of the best restaurants I’ve eaten at (”Don Camillo”), balmy evening walks around the harbour, Sicilian gelato, Sicilian Marsala, Sicilian fish, Sicilian oranges....remind me why I have to leave?

Siracusa harbour, sunset. *swoon*