invaders, the architecture is unique – a chaotic hodgepodge of Punic, Phoenician, Roman and Arab-Norman-Byzantine influences, with some 64 churches, 36 museums and 44 palaces open to the public. Monuments stand side by side with shabby tenements bedecked with drying laundry; narrow cobblestone alleys, adorned with makeshift shrines to Rosalia (Palermo’s patron saint), lead to splendid honey-coloured stone squares. Puppets (don’t miss the Antonio Pasqualino International Puppet Museum, museodellemarionette.it) are a high art, and pistachios reign supreme. Cannoli-binging, particularly the pale-green nut-infused variety, is expected. Ice-cream sandwiches begin at breakfast, with a scoop of homemade icy almond slush (granita) atop a freshly baked brioche. Palermo’s shifting cityscape got a jumpstart in 2015, when mayor Leoluca Orlando decided to transform the traffic-choked main drag, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, into an inviting pedestrian zone. These days – from Porta Nuova to the Piazza dei Quattro Canti, where four districts converge – the historic centre is an effervescent hub of activity lined with stylish local brand boutiques, cafes, galleries and › pasticcerie (stop for a sweet pick-me-up at La Martorana, fb.com/ lamartorana.palermo). Explore La Cala, Palermo’s spruced-up fishing port and the medieval Castello a Mare, then stroll through the Kalsa quarter, where the recent renewal of dilapidated buildings (bombed during the Second World War) has attracted artsy boho cafes and an association of local artisans and artists. You’ll find jewellery at Piccola Fabrica (fb.com/ piccolafabrica), unusual stationery at Edizioni Precarie (edizioniprecarie.it) and colourful handwoven Sicilian straw baskets at Torretta Vito (Via Aragona, 15). For an aperitivo or dinner, head to nearby Pablo’s Ristorante Lounge Bar (pablos-ristorante-lounge-bar.business.site), where chef Paolo Romano dishes up refined creative dishes with the freshest ingredients. Another culinary newcomer is MEC (Meet Eat Connect, mecpalermo. it), a combined restaurant and tech museum housed in the beautifully revamped 16th-century Palazzo Castrone-Santa Ninfa near Palermo Cathedral. Born of a quirky concept between architect, collector and founder, Giuseppe Forello (who owns over four thousand vintage Apple pieces) and chef Carmelo Trentacosti, guests dine alongside memorabilia and some 200 computer antiques. The exquisitely prepared neo-Sicilian cuisine includes computer-nerd signature dishes: a bitten-apple-shaped mould filled with tangy caponata and a ricotta cassata dessert in the shape of Steve Jobs’s face. Hidden away in an alley next to the bustling food market Capo is Le Angeliche (leangeliche.it), a cosy bistro with a backyard outdoor terrace run by four young women. “We’re cousins!” explains self-taught chef Veronica Schiera, who spent a year travelling all around Sicily to collect grandmothers’ recipes. “Our goal is to preserve the memory of old flavours.” Her motto: taste over aesthetics. The ever-changing menu of delectable slow-cooked comfort food includes green ravioli filled with sardines, creamy caciotta cheese, raisins and pine nuts, topped off with a pistachio-studded orange-mousse chocolate cake. “Sicily is blessed with an amazing biodiversity,” Schiera muses. “We have it all – sun, soil and soul.” And visitors are inclined to agree. Earthy or glitzy, Palermo’s prized heritage is ready for its close-up. ¬ From top: the Nautoscopio, an interactive installation by Giuseppe Amato in Palermo’s harbour; Sicilian cassata, made with ricotta, candied fruit and almond paste; the postcardperfect coast off the Palerman commune of Cefalù 74 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
Harvesting the vines at Monaci delle Terre Nere, on the eastern edge of Etna National Park ETNA IN FOUR-AND-A-HALF BOTTLES One of the world’s most exciting wine regions is ripe for discovery, says Bill Knott PHOTO ALFIO GAROZZO W ho on Earth, you might think, as you drive along the cinder-strewn road between Linguaglossa and Randazzo in northern Sicily, the vast, fire-filled hulk of Etna louring to your left, would want to make wine here? Yet, as is clear from the landscape of old, gnarled bush vines, dotted with ancient stone buildings, people have been making wine here for a long time. Not only have these vineyards survived, they are flourishing, and the Etna wine region is now one of the most exciting and progressive in Europe. Why? Because, despite Etna’s menace, it offers winemakers two great benefits. The altitude, which brings down temperatures, compensating for Sicily’s southerly latitude and lengthening the growing season, and the soil: volcanic and richly fertile. Two grape varieties are the stars here: carricante, which produces taut, lively white wines, and nerello mascalese, responsible for the region’s expressive, fragrant, elegant reds. The latter is often compared to pinot noir and nebbiolo, although it is lower in acidity and is often at its best within five years of bottling. The other stars are the winemakers, and they are a cosmopolitan bunch. Etna has attracted the interest not just of Italian winemakers – the founder of the Passopisciaro estate, Andrea Franchetti, who died last year, was an early pioneer – but of winemakers from around the world. Frank Cornelissen, for instance, who makes some of Etna’s most distinctive, uncompromising and, it must be said, pricey wines, had a previous life as a broker in Belgium, while American-born businessman Marco de Grazia now makes superb wines at Tenuta delle Terre Nere. And then there is Vino di Anna, owned and run by Australian oenologist Anna Martens and her French husband Eric Narioo, well known in the wine trade as the co-founder of London wine merchant Les Caves de Pyrene: “We couldn’t really call it Vino di Eric: in Italian, Anna sounds much better!” Narioo and Martens’s first wine, made in 2009, was called Jeudi 15 – “because we picked the grapes on Thursday the 15th October” – and it is still made every year, alongside their Palmento wines, which are named after Etna’s traditional, two-tiered stone wineries, and several wines fermented and aged in Georgian qvevri. Narioo loves Etna for the freedom it offers a winemaker. “When we arrived in 2008, we asked ourselves, ‘What is Etna wine?’, and there wasn’t really an answer. Most Etna wine was transported in bulk to the north of Italy to beef up their reds.” On Etna, he could define his own style, “and we found that we didn’t need chemicals or treatments. We grow our grapes between 760 metres and 1,100 metres: at that altitude, and with the winds that whistle through the vineyards, the vines don’t need any artificial help”. Although most of Etna’s wineries welcome visitors by prior arrangement (SRC has a particularly beautiful new tasting room attached to its modern winery), Etna is not Napa Valley. The best “cellar doors” are local restaurants, where the standard of cooking is invariably high, and the wine lists universally lengthy and well priced. Here are four (and a half) of the very best bottles to enjoy at some of the region’s most beguiling restaurants. › CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 75
