honeymoon pittsburgh
Palermo
Towards the end of the classic novel of Lampedusa, The Leopard, a prince of Sicily and their understanding of the family in a car in its slot satin and silk to travel to a big dance in the dark, narrow streets of Palermo. The year is 1862. Two years ago the people of Sicily had voted for unification Italy, after the arrival of Garibaldi's troops on the island. The young Princesses are delighted at the prospect of a ball. His father, the weary world, the prince Fabrizio – the leopard of the title, the name of a layer of weapons are still found throughout southern Europe, the approach of night, with little pleasure. Garibaldi's arrival announced the end of the slow, sensual gilded palaces, fragrant gardens and cottages that Prince has ever known. The rigid social structures have collapsed. Within the Prince's family to his beloved nephew, Tancredi, is in love with the beautiful local shopkeeper's daughter of nouveau riche.
As EM Forster called "a book of great solitude ", Lampedusa, himself a century, the prince, writing the history of its nineteenth century counterpart, look through the eyes of the prince Fabrizio as his world slowly collapsing around him. When Visconti made his sumptuous, opulent film of the book, cast Burt Lancaster as the Prince, as the nephew Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale as impressive grocer's daughter, Angelica. In the book, the ball was held at the Palazzo Ponteleone in a ballroom of "a pale gold, pale as the hair of certain Nordic children ", where" From the roof of the gods, reclining on gilded couches facing down. "In this very faded grandeur, the author's voice suddenly interrupts himself to say that the gods may have "felt eternal, but a bomb manufactured in Pittsburgh, Penn., was to demonstrate otherwise in 1943. "
And so it is with almost every one of the places in the novel. How can I make my way in Palermo, Lampedusa's world, as evidenced secretive and elusive as the big cat of the title.
In 1968 an earthquake destroyed country of origin of Lampedusa, in Santa Margherita Belice – the fictional Donnafugata of the novel. Back in Palermo, where the dark, huddled old town hides the sun and turns away from the royal blue sea, the Lampedusa family palace, was also bombed by the Allies. Ando towards the sea to catch a glimpse of the Trinacria hotel on Via Butera where Prince Fabrizio die twenty years after the ball. A guide published in 1996 says it is being renovated and I learn that in Sicily slippery, the guide should be a day because I just bricked facade and a plaque marking its former glory.
I'm about to give into despair when I remember that before leaving London, women in the travel agency nel Mondo Italy had handed me a sheet of paper with the direction of a countess. Another agency faxed me the phone number of a princess. Like their British contemporaries, the nobility of Palermo need money to maintain the palaces that date back to the 12th century. And they have decided to hold dinners in their palatial homes. Perhaps it is the lost world of the Leopard here. I do two phone calls and find myself invited to a dinner party Saturday night with a group of U.S. study in the palace of the princess and dinner on Monday night with the countess and a group of Germans.
On Saturday, I ring the Pietratagliata Palace, next to a wooden door into a giant shadow, cobbled street. A market is closing, which is not a place to stay. A small door opens into the great and I am in a large courtyard in the bottom of a marble staircase. The Signoretta Principessa is waiting at the top. N Faded Glory is she but a thin, beautiful, vivacious brunette. She leads me through the halls of barons in the ballroom where, with the Americans, who can sample Sicilian specialties under largest chandelier in the 18th century world.
Two days later, the blonde and stunningly beautiful Countess Federico Alwine, originally from Salzburg and a trained soprano, guides to the German group's twelfth-century tower of the vast and opulent Palace Conte Federico. Before we sit down to dinner and a recital of songs by the countess, she shows us the Pleyel piano where Wagner once played.
Wagner would have been a contemporary Prince Fabrizio of fiction. So the world of Leopard is still here, in Palermo, hiding behind the tall gates dark. "But I do not want to be a leopard, "sighed the princess, two days before," just look at everything out. I want to be a tiger and a renewed fight for Palermo! "
She can not entirely approve of it, but I think that Prince Fabrizio, a man who even in the deepest melancholy, never stopped see a beautiful woman, would have applauded these intelligent, beautiful 21st century nobles who are building their own version of the world of leopard.
Flights to Sicily hotels, countesses and palaces can be organized by specialists in Sicily: Italia nel Mondo: 0207 828 9171, [http://www.thesicilianexperience.com]
Janette Griffiths is an award-winning travel writer, novelist and broadcaster. She divides her time between Vancouver, London and Paris. She is currently adapting her novel The Singing House – set in the high romantic world of Wagnerian opera – to the screen. http://janettegriffithsitaly.blogspot.com/
