Stories

Palazzo Abatellis in the Kalsa was once the home of a powerful official, then spent several centuries as a convent, and today it is a museum. Inside, I would definitely stop for the huge Triumph of Death, the small room with Sicilian Renaissance marble sculpture, and the Annunziata by Antonello da Messina — the work I sometimes come back just to see.

Porta Nuova has two completely different faces. On the Monreale side, you’ll see four giants: two with their hands tied, like prisoners of war, and two with their hands cut off, as if they were no longer able to fight. Walk through the gate and look back from the city side, and instead of warriors you’ll see four female busts symbolising peace, justice, truth and abundance. At the top is the eagle, the symbol of Palermo and a reminder of the old Porta dell’Aquila that once stood here.

For me, Casa Professa is the perfect way to explain the Sicilian word tascia: bright, excessive and a little showy. You walk inside and are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Baroque. It’s the most “Baroque Baroque” I’ve ever seen in my life.

Porta Felice has no traditional arch across the top, and there’s a favourite Palermo story about why. In the 18th century, people jokingly called the gate i corna a luna — “horns under the moon.” Nearby was the seafront, where aristocrats loved taking evening walks, including romantic ones. So people joked that the top had deliberately been left open so that cheated husbands could enter the city without catching their horns on the arch.

Quattro Canti is known both as the “Theatre of the Sun” and the “Crossroads of Spirits.” The square was designed so that at least one of its corners is always lit by the sun. But this was once a place not only for celebrations and processions, but also for executions — hence the old saying, “Feste e forche a Piazza Vigliena”: “Festivals and gallows in Piazza Vigliena.”

Fontana della Vergogna wasn’t originally created for Palermo. For around twenty years, it stood in Florence before being sold to Palermo. The enormous fountain was dismantled into hundreds of pieces, transported to Sicily and reassembled in Piazza Pretoria.