Randy's Palermo - Palazzo Mirto

The Palazzo was not in my tour book, it being published in 2003. Randy had been here before so he treated me to this amazing experience. Perhaps I did not have my camera, or photos were not allowed but I do not have photos. I looked on line for what others have taken.

Address--Via Merlo, 2, off Piazza Marina. I most particularly liked the courtyard and the stables with the marble water troughs.

Trip advisor link:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187890-d534363-Reviews-Palazzo_Mirto-Palermo_Province_of_Palermo_Sicily.html

I wondered what happened to the Filangeri family. I saw photos of a young family just prior to World War II. Maria Concetta Lanza Filangeris fulfilled the will of her brother Stephen, donating the building to the Region of Sicily that it might be kept in its entirety and open to public use.

PALAZZO MIRTO
Source: http://royalfilangeri.com/palazzo-mirto/

"The Filangeris are still remembered today as the most important Norman family in Sicily and southern Italy, the same strain of Sanseverino and Gravina, all descended from a common ancestor, the legendary knight Angerio, the lineage of the Dukes of Normandy, which Italy came in the wake of Tancred and of which he has mentioned already in 1069.

The Sicilian branch comes from Abbo Filangeris, living in the thirteenth century. First of the family to be given the title of Prince of Myrtle was Giuseppe De Filangeris and Spuches in 1642. We also recall the Filangeris Principles of Cutò, maternal ancestors of the writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa .

In 1830 Victoria Filangeris last of his name, joined Ignatius Lanza Branciforte, Earl of Raccuja. Their discendentii have lived in the building continuously until 1982, when the last heir of the family, Donna Maria Concetta Lanza Filangieri Myrtle donated the palace to the Sicilian Region for necessarily constituting a museum as a bequest of her brother Stephen Lanza Filangeris.

The interior is furnished with magnificence. Perfect example of the residences of the Palermo, the palace houses furniture ranging from the seventeenth century to ‘ nineteenth century . Numerous chandeliers Murano , lacquered panels of China , clocks, porcelain, and tapestries. As in many contemporary residences, there is a smoking-room furnished the Chinese with the leather floor. The reception rooms revolve around a pleasant terrace with a fountain rockery and decorated with a trompe l’oeil of a garden.

On the ground floor of the former prison, the large and small kitchen, where the stables are kept carriages, buggies and harness the nineteenth century, forming the collection Martorana Genuardi the Barons of Hauptstrasse, now owned by the Regional Cultural Heritage and Environment, warehouses, rooms for the servants, that with the third floor, the seat of the house, complete the structure of the building.

The first floor or first floor, features a series of sumptuously furnished rooms, which follow one after the other, hanging around a courtyard with a beautiful baroque fountain and culminating in the Hall of the Baldacchino and the Tapestry Hall. In the latter parties were held and all the official ceremonies that marked the life of the nobility and which tended to exalt the excellence of the house, his indisputable prestige, but mostly represented an opportunity to reaffirm membership of an exclusive class.

The second floor , while containing environments designed for social use, but for a more restricted circle of friends, was reserved for the privacy of the family. In it are located the bedroom of the principles, the dining room, two libraries and a sequence of studies and living rooms that have similar decorative elements."

Slow food movement

I think I heard about the slow food movement from Erika. I saw a poster at the Palermo Museum during the flower and plant show. According to my tour book, it started in Piemonte Italy in 1986 with 62 members. At the time of this publication, it had grown to over 100,000 members in 132 countries. Every October, Turin hosts the Salone del Gusto, the world's largest food and wine fair.

The idea behind it is to promote the pleasures of food and drink and encourage the use of local, high-qulity ingredients.

See www.slowfood.com for more information.

Casa Romana Sicily Bath and Toilet

This is a must see. Thanks to Randy's perseverance and navigation!

South and inland of Palermo, in the interior of the island near Enna, can be found a fairly intact Roman Villa from the 4th century BC, with room after room of incredible mosaic floors:

The Roman country house had both public and private baths with a separate toilet room. Note the tile floor and the water passage uncovered around the sides. Just a guess--like Ephesus in Turkey, the water would have run continually under the structure.

Furnaces were placed outside of the baths to heat the water for the hot baths. The small columns of stacked bricks supported the floor, creating a closed space through which heat produced by the furnaces was collected and moved through the bath complex.

Three rooms are part of the hot bath system. The 2 external environments are the caldaria, each provided with a small pool for immersion into the hot water. The center of the Laconicum has no pool, it was heated with dry air of about 60 degrees for brief sweats. The Tepidarium (as in tepid) is an elongated structure, heated at a moderate temperature to avoid excessive change in temperature between the hot and cold baths.

The cold bath system (frigidarium) had a central octagonal structure with six niches, used as a dressing room.

From here one could go to the large pool for lap swims or the small soaking pool. The collonade supported a central dome from which light entered. Opague glass tiles lined the vault and the walls reflecting light from the dome. 

The massage room seems to have been completely lined with marble in the late antique period. Titus and Cassius are depicted with servants holding items for massage like a bucket and brush. The little well, or hole in the top of the photo designed to suggest a four-petal flower, is the only original drain cover remaining in the villa.

Oh for a Terme!

Ancient Roman Theatre - verona

About ten minutes walk from Piazza October 16 along the river brought us to the Ancient Roman Theatre overlooking the river. While not much remains compared to Segesta, we could see a similar construction style.

Believed to be the first Roman Theatre constructed with stone, it was built around 25 B.C.

The center was built on the hill and the sides had support walls with access to the galleries. The whole was covered with a portico with a series of arches.

View from the top of the hill of San Pietro, where the original city once was located.

Along Lunga San Michelli looking toward Ponta Pietra with the Teatro to the right of bridge (Not in photo).

People were allowed to dismantle old buildings and reuse the materials. In time the area was covered with houses. In the 1800's a guy named Andrea Monga bought up the properties which had been built over with houses and such. He demolished those and began excavating the old theatre.

Casa Romana Mosaics Sicily

Here is a sample of the mosaics throughout the casa. The one I found most intriguing is the one I would call the remodel of the girls' room. Note the old tile in the far left corner, before they put a new mosaic of girls in swimsuits playing ball.

 

Randy's Palermo Tour--Puppet Theatre

The Puppet Theatre was not open. I liked the fountain in the courtyard.

We passed puppet shops in Palermo and also in Syracusa. Here are a few puppet photos.

Casa Romana Sicily

On the way back to Palermo, after Syracusa, Randy wanted to see the Villa Romana del Casale, near Enna.

The entrace has a bit of mural left on the wall, the feet and robes of men with borders of military insignia remaining. From this, I expected nothing but ruins. Had I read the information in the guide book, I would have been better prepared. Likely it is so well-preserved because of its relatively remote location.

From the south entrance, you come into a large, irregularly shaped courtyard which provides access to different aspects of the villa: north to the thermal complex, west to the latrine, east to the quadrangular peristyle. This is as large columned portico arround which are the central rooms of the villa. As you walk along the wings, various rooms of the villa can be viewed. At the east end, three large stairways lead to the corridor to the "great hunt" and the basilica.

My favorite space, the peristyle, provided quick access to different areas of the villa. A central element in Roman villa architecture, the peristyle was used for the walking ritual, dreambulatio, as well as entertaining guests and hosting philosophical conversations. Randy said the central courtyard would have been full of plants. The floors of the corridors are decorated with animal motif mosaics 

War

This week of April 25 is the celebration of the liberation of Italy by the Allied Forces. In Sicily, we saw a lot of abandoned bunkers along the coast line.

In Syracusa we visited a WWII Memorial to Great Britain troops that landed in the first wave of Allied Soldiers in Sicily. Operation Ladbroke was a glider landing that began July 9, 1943 with the intention of securing the Ponte Grande Bridge as the first step in taking control of the city. 

The men had an average of eight hours of training with 4.5 hours of that in the unfamiliar American gliders and 1.5 hours of night flying practice. Over 2,000 British troops took off from Tunisia. Strong winds and defensive flying to avoid anti-aircraft fire resulted in 65 gliders releasing too early crashed and crashing into the sea, drowning approximately 252 men. 

Only 12 landed in the right place. Another 59 landed up to 25 miles away. The rest either failed to release and returned to Tunisia or they were shot down. One Horsa (British glider) platoon of infantry from Staffords captured the bridge. By 10 am only 87 men remained. No reinforcements arrived. By 2 pm, after running out of ammunition and down to 15 uninjured solders, they surrendered to Italian forces. When the 5th Infantry Division of Royal Scots Fusiliers arrived at 4 pm, they retook the bridge.

Epitaphs:

J.A. Love, Ordinary Seaman Royal Navy, age 19. "He was so young to give so much that others might be safe and free."

J. Garner, L Cpl, The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, age 32. "Buried at the time in Floridia communal cemetary but whose grave is now lost. Their glory shall not be blotted out."

R.C. Browning, Private, The Seaforth Highlanders, age 26. "He died that we might live. Sleep on, thy race is run."

Two Solderies of the 1939-1945 War, A Canadian Regiment. "Known Unto God."

L.L. Goldstein, The Royal Scots Fusiliers, age 30. "Died in the Cause of Humanity's Liberation."

P. Finlayson, Lieutenant, The Sherwood Foresters, age 24. "Caidil Gu Latha." ("Sleep on 'Til Day," Cape Breton Lullaby by Kenneth Leslie, Canadian poet and songwriter).

Copy and paste to your browser:

Cape Breton Lullaby - YouTube

▶ 4:07

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfJjkyWfZVE

Driftwood is burning blue, wild walk the wall shadows,
Night winds go riding by, riding by the lochie meadows.
On to the ring of day flows Mira's stream, singing:
Caidil gu la laddie, la, laddie, sleep the stars away.

Far on Beinn Bhreagh's side wander the lost lambies.
Here, there and everywhere, everywhere their troubled mammies
Find them and fold them deep, fold them to sleep, singing:
Caidil gu la laddie, la, laddie, sleep the dark away.

Daddy is on the bay, he'll keep the pot brewing,
Keep all from tumbling down, tumbling down to rack and ruin;
Pray, Mary, send him home safe from the foam, singing:
Caidil gu la laddie, la, laddie, sleep the night away.

From Wikipedia:
Kenneth Leslie [1892-1974] - Canadian poet and songwriter, and an influential poilitical activist in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Pictou, Nova Scotia, his father was a shipping magnate who became a member of the Quebec legislature in 1905, but drowned that same year when one of his ships, Lunenberg, sank in a storm. Leslie was raised by his mother, learning to play the violin and piano, and singing and writing poetry. He was a child prodigy, attending Dalhousie University in Halifax at age 14. Later he was educated at Colgate Theological Seminary for a year; the University of Nebraska, where he received his M.A.; and Harvard, where he studied under idealist Josiah Royce but did not receive a Ph.D.

Caidil gu la - title of a fiddle tune in the Captain Simon Fraser [1773-1852] Collection (The Airs And Melodies Peculiar To The Highlands Of Scotland And The Isles, 1816). One translation given to this Scottish Gaelic phrase is Sleep (on) till day.

Syracusa

Randy made the arrangements for our stay in the old town of Syracusa which is on Ortigia Island. We stayed in an ocean-front room at the Domus Mariae. It is run by Ursuline nuns, although most of our contacts were with Cinsia at the front desk. 

View from room!

Since we had only two nights, we focused on the museum and the old quary and theatre. 

Factoids:

While there were people in Sicily 2,000 B.C., Syracusa was founded as a Greek city in 733 B.C. 

The Athenians invaded and were defeated in 413 B.C. The victors held 7,000 Athenian enemies in the quarries for seven years in "appalling conditions."

Plato moved to Syracusa in 398 B.C. He called it a model utopian city. By some sources, it was the most important city in the world until the 10th century.

The Punic wars started about 264 B.C. with Syracusa falling to the Romans in 212 B.C.

St. Paul preached in Syracusa on his way to Rome in A.D. 59.

After the Roman Empire was split between east and west, Syracusa was the capital of the Byzantine Empire for a short time around 663 A.D., under Constans II.

Location, location, location explains the long line of conquerors: Corinthians, Greeks, Carthaginians (Phoenicians), Romans, Goths, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Byzatines,  Muslims (AKA Saracens), Normans (German/French), Spanish, French (Napoleon). Italy and Sicily were united in 1861 after an uprising led by Garibaldi from Piedmonte. Syracusa was bombed and captured once by the Allies and once by Luftwaffe in World War II.