Stone upon stone: an Italian sojourn: Saints and sinners

Well, it looks like it is to be either drenching rain or blinding sunlight here in Palermo: today we could have carried a sunshade to protect ourselves from the glare. Such a difference from yesterday.

Part way down every street there is a church in Palermo. Today was a church day for us, as there are so many of them, and lots are UNESCO listed, and most we managed walking as they were within easy walking limits. We would never think to look inside churches at home, but in Europe they are an entirely different beast. They are built spectacularly. By the end of our three months, though, we will likely not enter one: we do get 'churched out'.

St Catherine's, tucked away in the back of Piazza Bellini, is one of them. The €3.00 entrance here evidently gets us into this plus many other religious sites throughout Palermo and surrounds, though the UNESCO sites tend to require a bit of a Euro top-up, we think.

Built in the 1500s, renovated in the 1800s, St Catherine's is sumptuously decorated in marble and sculptured wall reliefs: not an inch of the fabric of the church walls or ceilings is left uncovered. It has an altar of amethyst guarded by life-size angel statues in silver, and highly emotive, heavily decorative, bas relief medallions along the walls. It is almost overwhelming, but could be an instant salve if the Sunday sermon was a wee bit boring. Working out the religious symbolism of the decor could keep a parishioner busy for many years of deadly sermons.

Across the piazza from St Catherine's are two UNESCO listed churches. The first we visited was The Church of St Mary of the Admiral, though it is called 'The Martorana'. A group of nuns, headed by Eloisa Martorana, took over the church in the 1400's: the name lives on in Sicily.

The nuns became famous for moulding marzipan into the shape of fruit: apples, bananas, peaches, oranges and the like--and painting them with edible colouring. These they sold to travellers and pilgrims and even today the sweet coloured fruit, frutta di Martorana, are prepared, especially during the Feast of the Dead in November. The church decor is quite Eastern, quite Byzantine and quite gorgeous. Its square gold mosaics are luminous with light, so today was a perfect day to visit it. I love the designs that offset the figures, too: such complex and exquisite inlaid graphic work.

Next door was the aged San Cataldo church. We visited many more churches than these today, but this was my favourite. It was built way back in the 1100s, at a time when the Normans ruled Sicily, but when the Arab influence was also still strong. The exterior roof has three small red domes atop which are hard to see but worthwhile hunting down for a view--and is quite Arabic. The interior is small, plain, medieval, spare, stark and Norman--but offset by aisle colonnades in such flamboyant Corinthian contrast it is almost a shock. The flooring--and, extraordinarily, it is the original floor in perfect condition--is inlaid mosaic: the design sharply beautiful. While the altar--also the original--is sharp-edged and spare in its simplicity.

From here, we headed back up past a street filled with shops selling religious paraphernalia and vestments. Why do we not have these at home? I know my sister sews all the vestments for her parish priests, but she can't make them for everyone. Where have all our vestment shops gone?

Enroute to the Cathedral we stopped for a quick bite of Sicilian street food and I had delicious caponata, then tried panelle, the famous Sicilian deep fried chick pea fritter. I could eat dozens of these. Our appetites sated, we found the Cathedral easily and make a visit. The exterior is grand. It fills a city block all on its own.

The interior is quite plain, spare, and a wee bit drab after the colour, light and luminosity in the smaller churches we have seen today, but it is filled with the bodies of kings and the relics of saints and is much revered by the locals who are often on the knees praying aloud to their saviour.

We took the free bus home and that was another Sicilian experience. We needed to go two stops, that was all. We had been warned by well meaning locals, with no English but we understood, the day before, and the day before that, to keep our purse shut, our wallet well secured. Because we have been robbed so many times in so many European cities we are extra careful now about that one thing. That we do well, I think. And today we could be proud of all the secure measures we now take because three skilled pilferers tried to crowd us into the back corner of the bus. They immediately leaned in on us, when there was no need to, the bus was not full; but that was their ploy so that we might not feel unusual pressure when they were about their pocket-picking business. They hid their hands under jackets they had folded over their arms, too, so that their wandering hands might not be visible. They tried hard, very hard, to distract us. To get us to look away from their movements. We were wise to them, though. And even at the stop when they tried to delay us, crowd us on all sides, completely surrounding us, strongly pushing and probing, we held strong and calm.

When we finally got off the bus a local lady standing by the door, who had seen it all stopped us in the street, and in Italian, made us look inside our wallet and purse to ensure nothing had been taken. She had her phone in her hand with the number of the police ready to dial in case anything had been taken. She, too, warned us to take good care in future, too. She was lovely. So many people are. But there is, here in the Mezzogiorno, a sizzle of danger, a sense of the anarchic: that something feral could happen at any time of the day. It is muted, in the background, but an awareness of it is there always as we explore this city.

We took a tea break at home, then went shopping for dinner somewhere different today. After reading Peter Robb's description of La Vucciria - his favourite street market in all of Palermo at the time he wrote his wonderful travel book, Midnight in Sicily, I have longed to visit the market. Today, we did. Afternoon is likely not the best time to visit as the fish marketeers had sold all their stock and long gone home; but La Vucciria, these days, is a shadow of its old self anyway. Since the days of Peter Robb's explorations other markets in the city are now bigger and more popular. We went anyway.

It is not too far from where we live. Less than a kilometre and through little back lanes that appear to have been around since the Middle Ages, so narrow and winding they are. I doubt they have ever been beautiful but many look squalid and unkempt these days. Market stalls, selling trinkets and cheap bric-a-brac, cover many of the lanes and hide some of the uglier scrawling graffiti. Newer stuff looks, as does much street art, far more political, with gloomy Mafia undertones still prevalent.

Vegetable vendors were peeling potatoes and selling them cooked in hot boiling water. There was an old tiled lavanderia opposite some market stalls that looked early medieval, but was still functioning. As was an old stone well in what was once the heart of the market place, the square. A relic among ruins these days, tho' it, too, is still in noble working order.

Many vendors had charred whole onions and blackened red peppers for sale: the hard work already done here, too. These I bought, saving myself time: thinking to have a pasta of charred veggies and Sicilian salami and olives. And there were fresh and preserved meat shops in many of the little lanes--Carne & Salumi--whose vendors were happy to cut as much or as little as we needed for just one meal in beautifully arranged circles on crisp clean white paper. At the Panificio we bought bread for breakfast.

We found caperberries in preserving salt from the island of Pantellaria, just south across the water, and bought a handful of those as garnish. Beside them were long Roma tomatoes, sun-dried: a handful of those, too, would go in the pasta. The vendor obliged, getting into the swing of dinner. We spied an appetising rockmelon opposite a prosciutto shop: so rockmelon wrapped in prosciutto and topped with Sicilian oil and pepper was to become our appetiser. And for dessert, we bought a fresh huge banana: which we ate sliced with Sicilian yogurt topped with a hot puree of red berries that we had frozen at home that just needed a flame underneath. Dinner was lovely. The market was fun. The produce near perfect. The service impeccable.

The surroundings were utterly surreal. In amongst it all a couple of guys were intently playing Scopa, taking tricks. One day we might get our heads around it all.