EvainSicily

Donne siciliane.... (di Paola Mentuccia) (ANSA) - ROMA, 23 NOV  16- "Non è stata una storia di vanità, è stata una storia di vita". Letizia Battaglia ha iniziato a scattare foto per pagare l'affitto di un appartamento a Milano, quando collaborava come freelance per il quotidiano di Palermo L'Ora. "Avevo una macchina fotografica e ho raccontato quello che c'era intorno a me". Quella "scatola magica", come lei la definisce, le ha permesso di entrare nelle case, di raccontare la vita più intima delle persone e la storia dell'Italia, di essere testimone dei più cruenti fatti di mafia, della condizione delle donne e di trasmettere al mondo intero il suo tenero sguardo nei confronti dell'umanità...

Panelle the most popular street  food in Palermo easy to make if you have: chick pea flour water  parsley salt and black pepper oil for frying

Islamic art Museum at Zisa Palace- Palermo This is a superb piece that shows  how multicultural, multilingual was Sicily in the XII century still at the times of Roger II's A marble funeral inscription for a Christian lady  written in four different languages including their  different calendars dating systems : Arabic-Jewish in the uppe part Latin on the left Greek on thew right   Arabic in the lower part That's why I like to say we feel Mediterranean........ I dedicate it  as a symbol of tollerance  and integration among people  to all the thousands  men, women and children looking for a new and better life  coming as illegal immigrants in Sicily

there are many places we can describe as really magic in Sicily! The Zisa Palace is really magic for its amazing beauty  but some visitors maybe don't know that  the Zisa Palace has something else magic to offer .. and I experienced it! In the archway that welcomes into the superb fountain hall  on the ground floor there's a fresco representing some mythological images:  the Gods of the Olimpo said to be the guardians of treasure hidden there Everybody nicknames them as the Devils of the Zisa as nobody can't really count exactly how many they are and it is said that when somebody will do it  Poverty will die in Palermo! Tha's why there's a  very popular way of saying in Palermo when  there's somethng wrong  or when it's terribly windy and stormy :  "E chi su li diavoli di la Zisa?" What I can say is that exactly when I was trying to count those figures a few days ago a very strong wind...

 In one of the oldest and popular quarters in Palermo there's really a "magnificent" palace as its Arabic name suggests: The Zisa (Al Aziz )  once private residence of the Norman kings in their private gardens of  the Geonard ( Arabic for Paradise in Earth )  Its one of the best examples  of  an astonishing architecture  with a purely Islamic inspiration the ground floor hall with the fountain the central hall on the top floor was an open atrium with a breathtaking  view the central the muquarnas : the miniature stalactite vaults in the niches and windows  today the Zisa home to the  Museum of Islamic arts  collecting  metalwork, ceramic  and wooden lattice work (Mushrabirryya )   down below the view of the Zisa district today where  we can just imagine the perfumes and the luxury vegetation of its gardens once also hunting...

various transports - La Zisa in Palermo -

   There's a place there are many places in Palermo where the architecture really shows the Arabic -Norman beauty of the Sicilian soul but one more than every else to me! S. Giovanni agli Eremiti  and  its extraordinary cloister  immersed in a mediterranean garden

walking around the historical centre of Palermo from the Great Beauty of the luxury Arabic-Norman architecture there's something else that  It's a MUST when you are in Palermo Go to Ballarò   food market   (from the Arabic Balharu ...) something else that also explains how much Mediterranean we are...   

What a nice video from my collegues in Palermo! I share every single word of the sentences above..and deeply share the same love for this wonderful job. Welcome to Palermo! Welcome to Sicily! I

This is the way still old people call Palermo: 'a Capitale The Cathedral