SOMERSET BOOKS ADVANCE INFORMATION BLUE GUIDE SICILY NINTH E D I T I O N Title: Blue Guide Sicily Published: January 2017 Author: Ellen Grady Format: 130 x 200mm Price: £19.95 Specification: 550 pages Edition: Ninth Two-colour with photographs, diagrams, ISBN: 978-1-905131-74-7 site plans and a section of full-colour maps. ISBN 8th edition: 978-1-905131-54-9 Cover: Original paperback, threadsewn in sections. About BLUE GUIDE sicily Fully revised and updated new edition of this popular Blue Guide, by Sicily resident and tour guide Ellen Grady. While this guide retains the Blue Guides' traditional focus on architecture, art and archaeology, with in-depth coverage of all the sights, both the famous and those off the beaten track, the author is also an expert on the cuisine of Sicily and each chapter contains detailed and up-to-date listings of where to eat and what local specialities to sample. Fully revised accommodation sections are also included, along with information on Sicilian wine. Ideal for on-site use as well as for at-home study and to help visitors plan ahead. The best-presented, best-researched cultural guide books in the English language ‘Ideal for cultural exploration’ Observer 198 B G S 199 274 Blue Guide Sicily Piazza Armerina 275 34 Blue Guide Sicily Messina 449 68 Blue Guide Sicily Palermo 35 Palermo 69 574 Blue Guide Rome AGRIGENTO Today the lake has no visible inlet or outlet and is apparently disappearing, perhaps PIAZZA ARMERINA sarcophagus) Peter II (d. 1342), King of Sicily. The smooth porphyry sarcophagi are In the south transeptLA ZISA (13) there & isTHE an altarpiece WEST by GiuseppeOF TOWN Velasco and, above the The Temple of Concord. because building activity nearby has damaged its underground sources. The vegetation almost certainly Imperial Roman in workmanship, because the Egyptian quarries of altar, a bas-relief of the Dormition of the Virgin by Antonello Gagini (1535). on the shores, as well as the bird-life, have suffered greatly since the 1950s, when it this type of stone were already exhausted in the Middle Ages. It is not known how they In the Chapel of St Rosalia (14) is a 17th-century silver coffer containing the relics Agrigento was decided to build a motor-racing track around it. Paradoxically, the lake is a nature The town of Piazza Armerina (map p. 569, B3) has a medieval character, with dark found their way to Palermo. ofThe the palace saint ( ofsee La p. Zisa 73); ( themap reliefs 9; open on Tues–Sun the walls and are holidays 19th-century. 9–1.15 & 2–6.15, Mon mornings reserve (run by the Azienda Forestale). cobbled streets and interesting Baroque monuments. The inhabitants are of Lombard only; T: 091 652 0269) takes its name from the Arabic al-aziz, meaning magnificent. It origin; many of them have blue eyes and blond hair and they have their own dialect. STUPOR MUNDI Theis the choir most and important north side secular monument of Arab-Norman architecture to survive in 574 p. DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE The town is divided into four districts: Monte (on the highest point of Monte Mira, ‘The wonder of the world’ is what his contemporaries called Frederick II of TheSicily, east and end is of purely the choir Islamic (15) in has inspiration. a Resurrection La Zisa of Christ was one on theof a altar, group high of palaces reliefs, andbuilt The goddess Demeter, patroness of the sowing of seed and where the new town was built in 1163); Castellina (the district around the church of San Hohenstaufen, for his many skills, ranging from languages (he could speak six), (inby niches), the Norman statues kings of thein their Apostles, private all parkfragments of Genoard of Antonello (used as Gagini’s a hunting reredos. reserve) The on PALERMO the harvesting of corn, was already ancient when Homer Francesco d’Assisi, so-called because of a small castle which once protected it); Canali mathematics, astronomy, astrology, music, literature (he was the founder of the choirthe outskirts stalls date of from Palermo. 1466. It was begun by William I c. 1164–5 and completed by his son. nce a prosperous ancient Greek city, celebrated her in his Iliad: ‘Blonde Demeter separates fruit (once the Jewish Ghetto; the church of Santa Lucia was the synagogue); and Casalotto ‘Sicilian School’ which flourished at his court in Palermo), the building of castles, TheThe palace chapel is left known of the to choir have (16) been houses used by a large Frederick domed II, ciborium but it was in already lapis lazuli in disrepair (1663) Agrigento (map p. 571, C3) presents a and chaff in the rushing of the winds’. Demeter’s daughter (a separate village, which was incorporated into the city only in the 16th century). hunting (his fundamental text on falconry, De arti venandi cum avibus, is in the andin the the late funerary 13th century. monument It was of fortifiedBishop Sanseverino by theChiaramontes (1793). in the 14th century. By the Oremarkable series of Doric temples of by Zeus is Persephone or Kore; they were known as Ceres Though it was once far more important and more populous than Enna (which was Vatican Library), to the fine arts of diplomacy. He was born quite by chance in Jesi, in 16thIn the century north it transeptwas in a ruined(17), at state the andfoot was of an drastically early 14th-century reconstructed wooden by the Crucifix Spanish the 5th century . On a higher ridge, the site and Proserpine to the Romans. There is the legend, placed named capital of the province by Mussolini), it was little known to travellers before the Marche, on 26th December 1194, because his mother, Constance de Hauteville, Sandoval family, who owned it from 1635 to 1806. It was expropriated by the Sicilian of the ancient acropolis, stands the medieval either in Eleusis in Greece or by Lake Pergusa near Enna in the discovery of the Roman villa nearby at Casale (see p. 277). was travelling from Milan to Sicily to join her husband. She chose to give birth in the government in 1955, but then abandoned until part of the upper floors collapsed in and modern town, overlooking a valley which Sicily, that Persephone and her companions were gathering Gold coin with the main square, under a canopy, so that the matrons of Jesi could witness the fact that 1971. After years of neglect, a remarkable PALERMOrestoration programme CATHEDRAL was begun in 1974 Agrigento stretches towards the sea. flowers in a meadow when the earth opened and Hades, the head of Persephone. the baby was really hers; gossip and speculation were rife; there was even a prophecy and it was finally opened to the public in 1990. The structure had to be consolidated god of the underworld, charged out in his chariot and seized HISTORY OF PIAZZA ARMERINA that the Antichrist was about to be born. Nine years earlier, Constance, as the last throughout, but the astonishing architecture has been preserved. As a finishing touch, Persephone. The Sicilian version says that he re-entered Norman princess of Sicily, had been brought out of a cloistered convent in Palermo in the magnificent gardens were imaginatively re-created, with lily ponds, fountains and the earth with his captive at the Fonte Ciane near Syracuse: there are records that The original Sicel settlement was probably near Casale, where a luxurious Roman villa order to marry the unpleasant, dissolute Henry VI of Swabia, eleven years her junior. walks, but unfortunately they were then totally neglected and are now ruined. LA ZISA there were drowning sacrifices at that site in ancient times, which may be linked to would later be built. It is a well-watered, fertile area which was conquered by the Arabs in Now she was 40, and this was her first child. Henry and Constance died soon after, royal tombs the myth. Demeter, after lighting a pine tree in the crater of Etna to use as a torch, 861 and named Iblatasah. The name may derive from palatia, a reference to the imperial so Frederick was brought up in Palermo, running free through the streets of the city, Exterior of La Zisa 21 1 Frederick II of Hohenstaufen central hall, used for entertainments, has niches with stalactite vaults. Around the walls 15 HISTORY OF AGRIGENTO wandered the earth desolate, eventually finding her daughter, but Persephone villa, whose imposing ruins were visible for many centuries after its abandonment. undoubtedly acquiring many of those accomplishments which would later stand him The fine exterior has a symmetrical design, 2 althoughConstance the of Aragondouble-light windows on the runs a mosaic frieze which expands into three ornamental circles in the central recess. had eaten six seeds of a pomegranate Hades had offered her and had married her In 1091 Count Roger gave it to his Lombard troops, who had taken it after a ferocious in good stead. Last of the medieval monarchs, first of the modern rulers, Frederick upper floors16 were all destroyed14 in the 17th3 centuryHoly Roman by Emperorthe Sandoval Henry VI family, who set The Norman mosaics (which recall those in King Roger’s Room in Palazzo dei Agrigento, the Akragas of the Greeks and the Agrigentum of the Romans, claims Daedalus kidnapper. Zeus decided that Persephone should spend six months of the year with battle; the Lombards called their new home Platia or Plutia. The town grew, entirely spent all his life trying to unite the Holy Roman Empire to the rich Kingdom of Sicily: up their coat of arms on the façade and altered4 Roger the portico.