Experience Sicily

Tag: art

  • He Carries On The Legacy

    Our Experience Sicily friend, Sicilian cart painter Michele Ducato, was featured this week on Medianews Extra in Italy. You may watch the interview, which is in Italian, here: https://youtu.be/h5LjSKeZc6M?t=36s. Although the interview is in Italian, those non-Italian speakers can appreciate the visual. The camera takes you into Ducato’s workshop in Bagheria, where we often bring…

  • Connect Through Travel

    Connect through the emotions of Campania and Sicily next summer! Join me, Allison Scola of Experience Sicily, and Danielle Oteri of Feast on History for a multigenerational tour exploring art, myth, culture, and food, June 29-July 8, 2018. Ladies from Pompeii (pictured left) will intrigue you and your granddaughter, while kings from Arab-Norman Palermo (pictured…

  • Lia’s Sicilian Hospitality

    Even in upstate New York, for me, Sicily is never too far away. Where my husband Joe and I ate dinner this evening, at Lia’s Mountain View Restaurant, in Pine Plains, New York you’ll find warm- Sicilian hospitality.

  • A World of Women’s Voices

    This painting by Ettore De Maria Bergler, hangs in Palermo’s Palazzo dei Normanni, the house of the Sicilian Parliament. Titled, “The Ruins of the Temple of Jupiter in Syracuse,” or “I Ruderi del Tempio di Giove di Siracusa,” it was painted in 1891.  Please join me in Middletown, Connecticut this Saturday, June 10 as part…

  • Happy Liberation Day Italy! 

    Tonight I’ll be at New York City’s Italian American Museum at 6:30PM, talking about what’s going on in Palermo, previewing our upcoming Experience Sicily tours, and performing a couple of Sicilian folk songs (part of Villa Palagonia). Plan to join me with Eszter Vajda of You, Me & Sicily for dinner at Capri restaurant at…

  • Voilà, It’s Majolica! 

    Santo Stefano di Camastra is one of Sicily’s ceramics centers. There is an entire street of the town lined with ceramics shops that are filled with majolica ceramics (maiolica in Italian). Majolica describes a technique of decorating earthenware (ceramics made with red clay, AKA bisque or biscuit) that has been fired at a relatively low…

  • Small-group 

    One of my favorite visits during our Enchanting Sicily tour is with artist Michele Ducato in his studio. Michele the keeper of the Ducato family business: painting Sicilian carts. He is so generous with his time and sharing his knowledge about his craft. 

  • Teatro Massimo’s Gilded Echo Chamber

    Teatro Massimo, Palermo’s opera house that opened in 1897, is a master work of Greek and Roman inspired architecture designed by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile (1825-1891). The interior frescoes of the theater were painted by artists Rocco Lentini, Ettore De Maria Bergler, Michele Cortegiani, and Luigi Di Giovanni, who likely brushed this detail I photographed…

  • Oh, Amore Mio! Tesore Mio!

    Oh, Amore Mio! Tesore Mio! (Oh, my love! My treasure!) … Can’t you hear her say? Love is in the air and on Sicilian carts with their illustrations of chivalry from “Orlando furioso” and other stories of princesses and knights. Master cart painter Michele Ducato in Bagheria showed us this cart, almost completed, in his…