Art and culture between sun and sea.
The identity of a land born of the waves.
Sicily welcomes everyone. In civil fashion, and has always
done so.
And one and all become Sicilians. For you don't have to be
born here.
Hermocrates of Syracuse made this point way back in 424 BC, when
he said: “We are neither Ionians nor Dorians, we are Sicilians.”.
We use the hand gestures of the ancient Phoenician merchants,
we are as crafty as the Greeks, as captious as the Byzantines,
and as blasé as the knights of Andalusia, and we still show great
respect for the dead and for the necropolises of all those who
died on the island. In our language, behaviour, food, and religion
we carry fragments of Greek culture, but also Roman, Byzantine,
Muslim, Norman, Angevin, Aragonese, Catalan… Each of these has
left a mark, architectural traces, masterpieces of art, transforming
the island into a unique open-air museum.
Sicily offers pleasure and joy to each and every one of its
visitors.
And to think that in the Middle Ages Sicily was described as being
“seared and riven by lava and sun, like a hell on earth, inhabited
by people more devil-like than human”. At the other extreme
is the “invention” of the Sicily described by Stendhal, whose
“Duchesse de Palliano” declares: “…as I travelled through Sicily,
my purpose was not just to observe the natural phenomena of Etna
or to clarify to my own mind and to that of others what the ancient
Greek authors said of Sicily. Above all I sought the pleasure
of the eye, which in this singular land is truly great. ”.
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