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On a map the island of Sicily looks like a stone being kicked by a boot. In real life, and since time immemorial, Sicily has been kicked around by its powerful neighbors. As a result, the island’s history is grand opera with drama of epic proportion. Dramatic opera feeds on treachery, blood feuds and unhappy love stories. The plot of Verdi’s opera the Sicilian Vespers, which takes place during the massacre of the occupying French troops by Sicilian “patriots,” fits the genre. This medieval maelstrom gave Verdi the dramatic material he needed for his lyric masterpiece.
Conversely Sicily is also the stage for another Italian musical specialty, the farcical opera buffa, which surely well compares with today’s soap operas. Trickery, adultery and ridicule are the key ingredients of this genre.
Thank God, Sicily is no longer the stage of maelstrom of the Vespers’ proportion. Even the thuggish Mafia, a quintessential Sicilian institution which expanded its own brand of Sicilian vespers as far as the United States, seems to have changed its strategy and toned down its rough edges. Bloody street murders are now rare; they are being replaced by more subtle forms of persuasion. The only Mafia-type activity tourists may experience is that of the Palermo airport taxi drivers. Even by Sicilian standards, they are clannish, expensive and obnoxious.
Fury and chaos can still be felt in the streets and piazzas of Palermo, Sicily’s capital, where car and motorcycle traffic is totally out of control and everyone has to fend for oneself. Today’s Sicilian patriots have not entirely lost their aggressive behavior; many use their cars as bludgeon of choice. Many drivers are totally insensitive to traffic regulations; speed limits are optional and double parking is an islander’s birthright. They defend their asphalt turf with no consideration whatsoever for the powerless tourists.
Sicily is most enjoyed by private car. However, handling the road pandemonium is challenging; driving provides an immediate culture shock for many tourists. Fortunately their initial frustration and panic attack does not last long. In no time, the formerly law-abiding Avis or Hertz Fiat driver morphs into a Hummer road warrior.
Sicily has always attracted foreigners, either occupying tyrants or benevolent rulers and now tourists. Modern day tourists come year round, mainly to discover the rich history, the glorious culture and breathtaking landscape, as well as to taste the healthy food and wine. During the warmer months northern European tourists flock to Sicilian beaches which are of an average quality by Mediterranean standards. Sicily is also a draw for culture-oriented tourists because it counts no less than five UNESCO heritage sites out of a total of 44 for the whole of Italy, the world champion.
Tourists visit Sicily to enjoy the legacy of the invading tourists of the past. Sicily’s first notable tourists were the Greeks who landed on its shores some 2700 years ago. They founded many trading colonies and built imposing monuments and majestic temples. In Sicily, Greek monuments have better withheld the test of time than in Greece. It seems that Greek architects applied better building codes than at home. The Templio della Concordia in the Valle of the Temples in Agrigento is better preserved than Athens’ Parthenon.
However, the best preservation prize goes to the roofless but perfect Doric temple of Segesta set in bucolic isolation. The majestic ochre-colored temple was left unfinished. Its inhabitants were serial turncoats; they routinely switched allegiance between their Greek masters and other invading forces from either Syracuse or Carthage. Legend has it that the temple was built quickly as a Hollywood-type prop to impress the Athenians into an alliance with them. They succeeded and the temple was never finished. Opera buffa trickery worked to a point; some years later the Syracuse troops came back and Segesta’s population was obliterated.
The roofless temple of Segesta.
Soon the Greek and the Carthaginian colonies were taken over by the Romans. Although the Romans occupied Sicily for some 600 years, they mainly used the colony as their “granary” and built little of architectural value. They customarily made alterations to the Greek theatres; Greek tragedies gave way to gladiators’ fights. The exception to this building laziness was the magnificent early 4th century Villa Imperial del Casale in Piazza Armerina. The house was allegedly built for an obscure Emperor when the empire was already decadent and crumbling.
The sprawling 50 room villa complex is probably the Roman equivalent to today’s Mc Mansions in North America. The villa served several purposes: a farm, a hunting lodge and a spa which may have doubled as a .sporting house, a polite term for an occasional lupanar (brothel). What makes the house so exceptional are the magnificent polychromic mosaics that cover its floor. These Roman mosaics are certainly the world’s finest in terms of preservation, quality and flamboyant imagery. The scenes are provocatively pagan, playful and erotic. The villa is famous for the unique and unusual “bikini girl” mosaic. Ten ladies are displayed, apparently wearing the Roman equivalent to a bikini. The girls were probably gymnasts, unless they were employed as female escorts to the Emperor’s male guests.
What took place in the villa is still an educated guess. One can imagine the Emperor’s guests frolicking in alcoves, chatting in the communal latrines, getting massages in the greasing room or being entertained by the bikini girls in the tepidarium (Roman baths). Such a frolicking tradition is not lost on modern Italian leaders. Recently, suggestive pictures taken in a posh Sardinia villa have created a media buzz and titillated people to the embarrassment of the said leader.
Exit the Romans. After harassing the crumbling Roman Empire, a number of barbarian tribes landed on the Sicilian shore. They proceeded to quickly plunder but left for lack of valuable targets. Byzantine rulers came next. They stayed for 300 years. Apart from converting temples into churches and teaching the locals to decorate them with gold mosaic, little is known of this period.
The Byzantines’ exit was more farcical than their arrival! Apparently the last commander of the Byzantine fleet, a gentleman named Euphemius, forced a nun to marry him. Utterly displeased, his hierarchy punished him. He then requested the help of the of Tunisian emir. Too happy to oblige, the emir sent troops to invade Sicily and threw the Byzantines out. Coincidently Euphemius was found dead soon after. In 878, after a decade of fighting, the island became an Arab kingdom.
Under the Arabs, Sicily shed its backwater label. For the following two hundred years it became the centre of a very flourishing Muslim state. The Arabs were the first hands-on invaders who did not rule the island by remote control. After the initial massacres of scores of Christians, and the mass immigration of the North African population, the island became a beacon of culture, art and economic development. The Saracens, as the Moors were known at the time, were not ostentatious builders; they were practical and as such converted the churches into mosques. However, they were discriminating craftsmen and generous with adornments.
Taormina was one of the last cities to fall into the hands of the Saracens. The town is known as the oldest tourist city in Sicily; for over a century it has attracted the rich and famous that comes to enjoy its mild weather, lovely setting and pleasant lifestyle, largely a legacy of the Saracen period. When walking the busy streets of Taormina one comes across shop after shop selling an assortment of life-sized ceramic heads of brightly colored mustachioed Saracens and blond girls. Pairs of heads commonly adorn the building balconies. There is a dark folk tale behind these peculiar crafted heads. The story didn’t take place in Taormina but in the capital Palermo in the 11th century. A  lovely girl was seduced by a handsome and rich Moor. They carried on a passionate love affair, but she soon discovered that he was leaving her to go back to Africa to rejoin his wife and children. With a broken heart and lost virtue, she decided to take revenge. After their last night of passionate lovemaking she slashed his throat and used the scull as a vase on her balcony. This is a metaphor for the fate of many Saracens in the forthcoming years.
The Middle Ages were far from dull. This is just the beginning! The pope in Rome had enough with the Moors in his backyard. So he contracted mercenaries to chase them from the island. At the time the experts in island invasion were the Normans who had successfully conquered England in 1066. This feat was the perfect dress rehearsal for their invasion of Sicily. The Normans were geographically French but their Viking blood made them fierce fighters. They didn’t waste any time. In 1099 Syracuse, the last Arab city, fell and the Normans became the new rulers of Sicily. Their 100-years-long dynasty was magnificent. They built the palaces and churches that tourists visit today, notably in Palermo, Monreale, Taormina, Cefalù and Paternò. To please the pope the Normans were a bit harsh with the Arab population, but they took advantage of its artistic skill to create the very attractive Arab-Norman hybrid style. In the process, mosques were converted back into churches.
After the Normans came the Germans, and with no ordinary ruler: Stupor Mundi or the Wonder of the World was how Frederick II of Hohenstaufen was known. However, his detractors nicknamed him the Baptized Sultan because he was too tolerant for the period.
So far so good until the new French pope got tired of the Germans. The religious laissez-faire did not go well with the pope; it was time for regime change. He asked the French to accelerate the process. The brother of the holy king of France and his army landed and defeated the squabbling Germans. The French strongly believed in heavy taxes, but the Sicilian population was not convinced; the political and social situation soon unraveled on the island. A popular revolt was orchestrated with Spanish support and on Easter Monday in 1282 the so-called Sicilian Vespers unleashed months of vicious killings. Exit the French and enter the Spaniards. Sicily reclaimed its backwater status until the 19th century.
During the Napoleonic wars Sicily fell de facto under English control. The British administration recorded modest success in introducing limited elements of democracy. Undoubtedly the outstanding British achievement was increasing the Sicilian wine production. Wine was needed in large quantity to supply Admiral Nelson’s fleet. Napoleon was finally defeated and the British lost interest in Sicily until 1832 when a bizarre geological event took place. A new volcanic island sprouted from the depth of the sea on the south coast between the Greek towns of Selinunte and Agrigento. The British rushed to claim the island with France and Spain in hot pursuit. For Sicily’s benefit and before the three powers came to blows the island mysteriously disappeared under the sea. After this bit of diplomatic trivia nothing much happened until the charismatic “freedom fighter” Guiseppe Garibaldi invaded the island in 1860 and forced its unification with the Italian mainland.
Sicily’s attractiveness comes from its tumultuous history in the hands of its serial invaders. The tourists are the new invaders; so far they have been welcome. If Sicilian people seem to enjoy the foreign hordes, Sicilian dogs are less friendly. The island is overrun by stray dogs. They roam in packs and are known to have bitten scores of people. The south of the island near medieval Ragusa and Baroque Noto are notorious for dogs’ vicious attacks on people.
For the record, the last invasion of Sicily took place during the summer of 1943 when the American GIs landed on the island, welcomed by the Mafia which had provided logistical support.
Sicily is indeed an opera of tragic and farcical facets.
Beatrice Labonne, July 21, 2009.
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