Sicily Guide

DK Eyewitness Travel Guides Sicily

28 Aug 2008 16:26:42 GMT

Eyewitness travel guides are packed with color photos and detailed maps and descriptions. Although heavy to carry around, they are great for planning your travels.

Sicily Eyewitness Travel guide is one of the best guidebooks I have come across.

Solar Panels on Mafia Land

28 Aug 2008 16:09:07 GMT

More than a thousand solar panels are to be set up on land seized from the Mafia in Sicily, officials said Wednesday. ''In place of abandoned villas and farmland we're providing development,'' said the mayor of the town of Campobello di Mazara, Ciro Carava', stressing that the 1,320 panels would provide valuable cash for Mafia-hit firms after the power it produces is fed into the local system. ''The money will be put into a municipal fund to finance small businesses run by families who have lost relatives to the Mob or been the victims of extortion rackets,'' he said.

Modern Sicilian Wines Coming into their own

28 Aug 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Sicily's ancient peoples - the Sicanians, Sicels, Elymians - - are lost to antiquity, but her ancient wine culture thrives, connecting Sicily's past and present to the future. Beginning about 800 B.C., Sicily's central location in the Mediterranean Sea landed her in the international mainstream.

Dionysus, God of Wine, shepherded the grape from Greece to Sicily - it is said - conveniently just ahead of Greek settlement of the island, circa 500 B.C. In 300 B.C., Roman historian Varrone documented 50 varieties of grapes planted throughout the island. Arabs arrived in the 800s A.D. and founded the city of Mars el'Allah, (literally "Port of Allah"), modern-day Marsala, made world-famous in the 1700s for its sweet fortified wine and countless chicken recipes.

Sicily Guide Store

28 Aug 2008 15:58:00 GMT

We have been educated by Sicily's best craftsmen, from farmers to expert scholars and technicians, about their products. We have walked their land and forged a friendship with their families and employees. We have observed their processes from harvesting to packaging.

The result is that today we can offer you products that are the labor of experience, bringing you the natural taste and scent of the island. Our products are classic Sicilian products, reflecting the authenticity of a land where products are still for the most part organic and prepared using old recipes and preservation machines, methods and means, protecting ancestral secrets handed down for generations. Certain products are indigenous only to Sicily because its extraordinary microclimate dictates that nature entrusted Sicily with unique treasures!

Snubbed Sicilian Town, Lercara Friddi, Pays Tribute to Frank Sinatra with a Festival

28 Aug 2008 00:59:00 GMT

Ten years after Frank Sinatra's death the small town of Lercara Friddi, near Corleone in northwest Sicily, has created a music festival in his honour - even though the singer refused to acknowledge that his family hailed from the area.

Throughout his life "Old Blue Eyes" maintained that his grandfather Francesco came from Catania. However, in Sinatra The Life, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan say this was because the singer was keen to distance himself from anything that would suggest he was close to the Mafia. Lercara Friddi was also the birthplace of Charles "Lucky Luciano", regarded as the father of modern organised crime.

The Work that Should Hang here Is Caravaggio's Nativity

27 Aug 2008 02:43:00 GMT

Almost 40 years after Caravaggio's masterpiece went missing, the Oratory is still displayed as the scene of a crime.It's far more dramatic than I pictured it. I vaguely expected to enter a dusty interior where time-darkened paintings obscurely skulked in side chapels, and to look in vain for a clue to where the stolen masterpiece once hung. Instead, the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo is an intense bright space with white walls and ceiling, and high windows that pour in natural light. At the altar end of the room, beneath a soaring sculpted canopy crowned by a sunburst of golden rays, is the grandiose setting for a painting...

Spadina Nero d'Avola 2003

27 Aug 2008 23:09:00 GMT

Nero d'Avola is the classic Sicilian wine: ruby red in color with intense aromas of vanilla and spice. On the palate it is bursting with bright cherry fruit, balanced acidity and exotic spices. It is produced in the southeastern side of the island, but also in the Palermo province where Duca di Salaparuta is located. The Spadina 2003 Nero d'Avola wine shows good balance with a deep garnet color. Ripe, dark cherry and plum fruit in the mouth and soft oak overtones with a velvety texture. The fruit has a supple sweetness and distinct character with a spicy, lasting finish. Pasta with meat sauces, roast and grilled beef, game and hard cheeses are ideal food pairings.