Theresa Maggio

Some beauty for a change.

You cannot tell a book by its cover. From the outside this palace does not look like much. The man who showed me around has a workshop downstairs. He went to school in this building, now a private residence owned by the family who once owned Palermo's soccer team. And a pasta factory.
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We are deep into winter in Vermont and I am thinking about these blue and white places. Sicily is such a beautiful island. Scala dei Turchi is near the big town of Agrigento but actually in the smaller town of Realmonte, where I stayed for a few days in 2010. The white stone is hard-packed gypsum. Realmonte citizens are the happiest Sicilians I have yet found.  Read More 

Here is a fine shot of Palermo by day, the same scene as Palermo by Night, of my Feb. 1 blog post below. If you don't look down at the refuse and garbage on the ground, things look really good.

Here is the mosaic of Il Capo, one of Palermo's three suqs. It is an art deco (in Sicily they would say Stile Liberty) mosaic depicting Demeter, the goddess of grains and agriculture, the mother of Persephone, and it is embedded in the exterior wall of the now closed Panificio Morello. A few tiles  Read More 

She is never more beautiful. This is a view of the Palermo cathedral from a rooftop in the historic center. Photographer unknown to me.

Palermo is famous for its Norman-Arab architecture. Here is the 12th-century pleasure palace La Zisa.

I just want you to see this. I am so lucky to live here.
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And I spent the morning in Mondello and Sferracavallo, by the sea. In Sferracavallo to see a complete, intact, protohistoric Bronze Age megalithic village, and in Mondello on the slopes of Monte Gallo to visit a panoramic, historic garden planted in the early 1900's, with archeological treasures from 10,000 years ago. Read More