Staying in Sicily this August I did not find great works of art; for that you go to mainland Italy (Sofia 125). In Sicily I found the most magnificent landscape I have ever seen, and in one hilltop village a small café in which I would have been happy to die, there and then. My wife and I stayed with a friend based in Taormina, once an essential stop on the Grand Tour, when travellers would climb the switchback road to the city by pony and trap. Now motor coaches swing precariously first this way then that. Oscar Wilde, amongst others, arrived at the railway station by the sea and must have made the 700 foot climb, leaving behind the bay in which today’s sun-seekers bathe and enormous black (Mafia-related?) motor yachts lie moored.
Sicily has been much shaped, and re-shaped, by the 11,000 foot volcano, Etna, set 30 miles or so back from its Eastern shore. Over the centuries eruptions of lava have both determined the lie of the land and sourced the rich earth in which lemons and other fruits abound. One day we took a trip to the mountain, travelling first in open-sided buses, then a cable car rising some 3500 feet, and finally some army-style trucks carrying us to within 1000 feet of the summit.
Here was a grey, lunar landscape, and although there has been no eruption for a month or so, steam still escapes ominously from holes up the slope.
Sicily played a key part in WW2, the Allied victors in North Africa moving on up through Italy. On a trip to the South of the Island we saw the headland on which General Patton landed with his forces (safely behind them himself perhaps?). This was an invasion and our guide for the day was not altogether in awe. He told of how Patton (a ‘War Criminal’) executed Italian and German troops. (1000 or more according to our guide, 73 according to Google.) This last was not a new technique. Back in 878 AD some 10,000 Turkish prisoners were massacred to deter invading forces, their heads displayed on the balconies of houses in the area as a deterrent.
Some time after Patton, my father arrived with the RAF, supporting the advance. We travelled by train to see Lentini, the small town where he was based for his time on the island. Judging by some 80-year-old postcards I still have, the main square has changed hardly at all. Sadly, the rest of the town has a rundown feel to it, a function perhaps of the economic problems of the region. I know little of Dad’s time there, as he left no written record, though I remember him telling me how the lads were sustained, in part, by the melons which they ‘liberated’ from the fields.
Spoils of war, but hardly a war crime by Patton’s standards. Being in-situ certainly brings the past to life. Just as in Berlin, I sensed the real pain of war (Sofia 131).
In Taormina we attended a piano concert staged in the town’s Greek/Roman Theatre, which dated from 215 BC, and saw a Hellenic temple in the square (exposed beneath an existing car park, à la Richard III). Taormina was the home of Saint Pancras. This particular priest was sent here by St Paul, no less, to be the local Bishop. That dates Pancras at about 40 AD and it is rumoured that as a youth he visited Jerusalem with his parents, where he may actually have seen Jesus preaching. The Saint, as he became, was stoned to death by the locals, who did not appreciate his efforts to convert them.
That hilltop village was Castelmola, perched some thousand feet or so higher even than Taormina, affording a panoramic view of this and the bays and small offshore islands. What a place it must be to live!
At its peak was a castle dating from Norman times, sign of another occupation. Just above the small square stood the café, run by two friendly guys, Pier and Cat. Sat in the warm sun with a cool drink and eating arancini, a Sicilian delicacy, who would not wish to stay for ever?
Dr John Pearson is Chair of SOF Trustees.