Join me tonight online! Although we can’t travel yet, Let’s Dream of Traveling to Sicily… Staring at 7:30PM Eastern I’ll give a presentation via Zoom during which I’ll discuss the highlights of traveling in the region, insider tips, and hold “Office Hours” to answer your questions. So, let’s muse of the views of what will…
Tag: painting
A Journey In Sicily To Discover Your Vision
“The Cyclopean Walls of Mount Erice” is a painting housed in the Palazzo dei Normanni (Royal Palace) in Palermo by painter Michele Cortegiani (1857-1919), (Oil on canvas, c. 1890). Monte Cofano pictured in the background is a magnificent limestone monolith on the Tyrrhenian coast that you’ll see with this same view when on Mount Erice,…
April 25 in Italy: Liberation Day
Happy Liberation Day Italy! After 20 years of fascist dictatorship under Benito Mussolini and 5 years of war, Italy became a democratic republic in 1946. Today, April 25, Italy celebrates La Festa della Liberazione, or Liberation Day, in order to pay tribute to the freedoms Italians couldn’t enjoy when it was a monarchy and under…
Celebrating Saint Agatha in Sicily
Viva Sant’Agata! For the next three days in Catania, Sicily’s second largest city, devotees of Sant’Agata will feverishly celebrate the virgin martyr who is identified by iconography where she is carrying her breasts on a plate. The city’s patroness (pictured as Roman soldiers attempted to burn her at the stake in this painting photographed in…
Feel Inspired
You bring light to the world when you support artists and small business owners. And you’ll feel inspired when you get upclose to an artist like Mirella Pipia, pictured, in Sicily in her ceramic workshop and boutique. Shop small this weekend, when we are offering a special pricing incentive on our 2018 small-group, multi-sensory tours,…
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…
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…
Me and My Dream Car
I’ve talked about this treasure in Castelvetrano before. Well, here I am enjoying a moment with it–my dream car, a Fiat 500 painted in the style of a Sicilian cart by the artists of Ceramiche Galfano.
The 12th Day of Christmas
Happy Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas! Painting hanging in a chapel of Chiesa di San Domenico in Castelvetrano (Trapani), “Circumcision of Jesus” (1580) by Simone de Wobreck (c. 1557 – c. 1587).