Heartland

... for the last five hours all they had set eyes on were bare hillsides flaming yellow under the sun ... They had passed through crazed-looking villages washed in palest blue; crossed dry beds of torrents over fantastic bridges; skirted sheer precipices which no sage and broom could temper. Never a tree, never a drop of water; just sun and dust. GIUSEPPE DI LAMPEDUSA The Leopard

Sicily's interior is a strange, at times rather alienating hinterland of mountains and rolling cereal fields. It feels like an empty landscape - its population sparse because of emigration over the years from a parched and sun-baked countryside into surrounding towns and cities. Not many tourists penetrate here.

Enna is one of the main settlements of the interior, situated right in the middle of Sicily. We stayed a night in the medieval heart of this old, fortified hilltop town. This is the view from Enna looking over to Calascibetta, a smaller and better preserved medieval town built on a slightly lower hill across the valley ...

Note the cracked urn - and the hazier, moodier weather ... On reflection I think the cracked urn was rather symbolic, for the unsettled, cloudy skies finally released their burden of rain (our only rainy day in Sicily) which lent Enna an even bleaker, gloomier and scruffier aspect ...

One of the main sites in Enna is the Castello di Lombardia. It's free to look round. Out of 20 original towers, just 6 remain. I climbed the Torre Pisano - from where there's a great view. This is the view westwards - of the inner castle, and of Enna itself, stretching along the spur of a ridge ...

And this is the view eastwards - of the Rocca di Cerere, or the Rock of Ceres. Enna lies at the centre of the Greek cult of Demeter (Ceres is her Roman equivalent), the goddess of fertility. In one of the most celebrated and allegorical of the Greek myths, Demeter's daughter, Persephone, is abducted by Hades and carried off to the underworld - which supposedly happened just a few km from Enna, at a lake called the Lago di Pergusa. We didn't go there, but I read that it's now encircled by a motor-racing track. Mmm ... something symbolic and allegorical about that, too, I think. Which takes us back to the cracked urn ...

The next day we bussed into Catania and took a train to Naples. We crossed the Strait of Messina - the narrow channel between Sicily and the Italian mainland - and were amazed to find that the train actually boarded the ferry boat! This was our last sight of Sicily ...

Vale Agrigento

So now it's vale Agrigento and its bougainvillea gardens ...

... its ancient olive trees ...

... its catacombs ...



... and its dry, sandy gorges ...

... not forgetting its sacred temples, of course ...

... for it's time to move on - away from the coast, and into the interior ...

Agrigento: The Valley Of The Temples (2)

Strung out along a ridge facing the sea, its series of Doric temples are the most captivating of Sicilian Greek remains and are unique outside Greece. The Rough Guide To Sicily

Henry Adams, in 1889, called Akragas, or ancient Agrigento, Athens with improvements. Pindar called it the most beautiful city of mortals. We found it a stunning place, and quite large enough to absorb all the May visitors. Certain spots we had completely to ourselves. Our artistic, Portuguese B&B landlady had enthused about the site's sacred, almost mystical aura, and about the extraordinary quality of the light. She was right on both counts.

The sacred buildings of this valley date from the 5th century BC. This is the temple of Castor and Pollux (or the Dioscuri - the Gemini twins) ...

And this is the temple of Concord (Concordia - Roman goddess of harmony, agreement and understanding), the most intact of the temples ...

Here's the temple of Hera (Juno), wife of Zeus (Jove or Jupiter), king of the gods ...



Looking back at the temple of Hera through prickly pear cactus, almonds and olives ...

Finally, this is the temple of Heracles (Hercules), son of Zeus and Alcmene, some would say the greatest of the Greek heroes (what he lacked in cleverness and subtlety, he made up for in courage and sexual prowess) ...

I just loved the Valley of the Temples, and it's given me a strong desire to travel further, to go to Greece, and Crete, and the Greek islands, so I can experience firsthand much more of early Greek culture, and walk in the footsteps of the gods ...

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro' / Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades / For ever and for ever when I move. / How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! / As tho' to breathe were life ... TENNYSON Ulysses

Agrigento: The Valley Of The Temples (1)

It took the best part of a day to travel by slow, provincial train from Noto to Agrigento. Worse still I had a hangover, as it had been my lovingpartner's birthday the night before, which we'd celebrated with a very fine meal, but far too many limoncellos ...

First the train crawled through a flat landscape of grassland and cereal fields. Then it became hillier and more interesting - lots of citrus and vines, all in little plots. Though many of these orchards and vineyards were covered in unsightly, white plastic sheeting - presumably to protect against the pigeons, of which there were vast flocks ...

Finally we arrived at Agrigento. It's famous for its Greek ruins - some of the best outside Greece. But let's leave that till tomorrow. For now we had to drag our cases up the Via Atenea to the most delighful B&B you could ever hope to find. This was the view from our breakfast terrace (painted, I think, by the lady owner, who was Portuguese) ...

And this is my own photo of it ...

The next day, before entering The Valley of the Temples, we spent a couple of hours in the Archaeological Museum, where there were many beautiful vases ...

Whispering On Stone: A Short Piece of Oral And Aural History

Sicily's southeast has always been one of the island's wealthiest and most turbulently historic regions. In Siracusa's Parco Archeológico you can see the remains of Classical Neapolis, including the Anfiteatro Romano, the Roman amphitheatre. Here gladiators confronted other gladiators, criminals and wild animals in bloody combat. The tank in the centre was probably there to drain blood and gore; and after the contests the ill and infirm would suck warm blood from the animals, and retrieve their livers, in the belief this would aid their recovery...

The wealth of Baroque times (as always historically, of course, this meant wealth only for the few) can easily be appreciated in the grand, golden buildings of Siracusa and Noto. Fanciful curves and curlicues, and extravagant, imaginative designs, and 'showing off' in general, were features of the Baroque ...

Caravaggio (one of the greatest painters of the Baroque era, and one of my own favourite artists, and one of Bob Dylan's too) observed that this cave in the quarry-garden of Siracusa's Latomia del Paradiso bore a striking resemblance to the human ear. Mmm, I think I can see what he meant...

You won't be surprised to learn that this cave is now known as the 'Ear', or the Orecchio di Dionisio, the Ear of Dionysius - though this name derives from an older story about the tyrant, Dionysius, who supposedly liked to eavesdrop on the conversations of suspected conspirators there. For the cavern has astonishing acoustic qualities - a little like the Whispering Gallery in St Paul's Cathedral. We tested this out and found that our muted mutterings close to the wall echoed spookily, reverberating round and round the rocky chamber ...

My favourite place, however, in the Parco Archeologicó was the tiny church of San Nicolò, which was by-passed by most visitors swarming to the more grandiose sites ...

Volcanic

Alone! - / On this charr'd, blacken'd melancholy waste, / Crown'd by the awful peak, Etna's great mouth ... MATTHEW ARNOLD

From Taormina we took a train to Catania, Sicily's second city, which lay further along the island's east coast. We squashed onto our hotel room's tiny balcony for an impromptu picnic of bread and cheese, ham and tomatoes, olives and wine. We squatted and munched high in the air overlooking Via Etnea, up among the flags and flowers, the telephone cables and air conditioning units ...

Peering northwards, through the balcony's ironwork, we suddenly saw the great mountain herself, Mount Etna (3329 metres), looming protectively over the city. Foreshortened by the perspective, she seemed only a short walk away, almost as if she were anchored down right at the end of the street ...

Whereas, in fact, she was a two hour bus journey's distance, as we discovered the next morning. After an hour or so en route to the volcano, the bus driver stopped for a cigarette break in the small town of Nicolosi, the half-way point. We got out to stretch our legs. The air was already noticeably chillier. Then the bus climbed and zigzagged round endless hairpin bends. Lemon tree orchards and green volcanic foothills with little conical peaks gradually gave way to sparsely wooded slopes and solid ash-grey lava flows. The vegetation became thinner and thinner until only a few scattered hardy plants remained.

We reached the bus terminus at the Rifugio Sapienza (which had nearly been engulfed by the eruptions of 2001 and 2002), and carried on up the mountain by cable car and 4WD minibus. (I would have walked this last stage, but you have to let women have their way sometimes, don't you?) The minibus steered a course between ten foot high walls of snow, and across a lunar landscape of black, red and grey lava, patched with snowfields ...

Once out of the bus we circled one of the craters on foot, clouds blanketing the peaks from time to time, sulphurous smoke billowing from the fissures and vents. The ground was hot under our feet ...

Mount Etna is the largest of three active volcanoes in Italy. The other two are Stromboli, on the Aeolian Islands, and Mount Vesuvius, near Naples. Etna is known as 'Muncibeddu' in Sicilian and 'Mongibello' in Italian. Both names mean 'beautiful mountain' ...

Later, back in Catania, we saw this elephant fountain in the middle of the cathedral square. The elephant is the symbol of the city, and it's made of black, volcanic lava stone ...

The Virgin Of The Rock

You have only to side-step away from the Corso Umberto, Taormina's main shopping street, and you are in another world, a world of tranquil backstreets and flower-filled balconies ...

A brick and stone path zigzags steeply up Mount Tauro (398m), the small peak above Taormina, and the site of Taormina's original settlement and citadel. This is the view from the path looking down over Taormina (you can see the Greek theatre if you look closely) and the clear blue waters of the Ionian sea ...

... and here's snow-capped Mount Etna, the icon of Sicily and spiritual guardian of Taormina ...

Brightly-coloured butterflies and scurrying lizards were everywhere. I had a face-to-face encounter with this Italian Wall Lizard, a really big specimen, the longest lizard I've ever seen in the wild, perhaps a foot from its snout to the tip of its tail. Its large size meant it was almost certainly a male ...



Near to the top of Mount Tauro stands the Santuario Madonna della Rocca ...

Inside the sanctuary, which is partly hollowed out of the rock itself, I lit candles in memory of my father, my mother, and my sister, and spent a few moments in quiet contemplation ...

... before descending the hill on the other side, and guessing my way intuitively back to the Piazza Duomo in the centre of town, past more balconies and shuttered windows ...

... and enticing doorways and cheerful tubs of flowers ...

Greek Theatre, Taormina

After climbing the steep cliffs near the sea, one reaches two summits connected by a half-circle. Whatever shape it may have had originally, Art has assisted Nature to build this semicircle which held the amphitheatre audience. Walls and other structures of brick were added to provide the necessary passages and halls. The proscenium was built in a diagonal at the foot of the tiered half-circle, stretching from cliff to cliff to complete a stupendous work of Art and Nature.

If one sits down where the topmost spectators sat, one has to admit that no audience in any other theatre ever beheld such a view. Citadels stand perched on higher cliffs to the right; down below lies the town. Though these buildings are of a much later date, similar ones probably stood in the same places in older days. Straight ahead one sees the long ridge of Etna, to the left the coast line as far as Catania or even Syracuse, and the whole panorama is capped by the huge, fuming, fiery mountain, the look of which, tempered by distance and atmosphere, is, however, more friendly than forbidding. GOETHE Italian Journey

Bob Dylan played the Greek theatre, Taormina, on 28 July 2001. What a setting to have seen him in!

Beautiful, Scandalous Taormina

After Cefalù we turned Sicily's north-eastern corner and edged down the coast to beautiful Taormina. (Sicily is commonly represented by the three-legged trinacria, a symbol of the island's three 'corners'. The head at its centre is that of the Gorgon Medusa, whose hair was turned into snakes by the goddess Athene. The three legs denote the three coastlines of Sicily - considered as gorgeous as the legs of a beautiful woman. Dante, in Paradiso, refers to Sicily by its original name of Trinacria, calling it la bella Trinacria.)

Like Cefalù, Taormina has long been a place of refuge for artists, writers and musicians. It was particularly attractive to English emigres - more remote than Florence, Naples or even Palermo, so the more dedicated, adventurous and, dare I say, eccentric travellers tended to end up there. It's not hard to see why they liked it so much. Goethe pronounced it a little patch of Paradise...

And DH Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover here - as well as numerous poems, short stories and travel pieces. Lawrence had eloped with Frieda Weekley, the wife of one of his Nottingham University professors, and embarked on a bohemian life of constant travelling - visiting France, Germany, Italy, South America, Ceylon, Australia, the USA and Mexico. They stayed two years (1920-22) in Taormina, in a house called Fontana Vecchia, which was built in the mid-1600s and is the oldest dwelling on the town's east side. 30 years later Truman Capote also lived here for a while. It's now in private ownership, and you can't really see much, only the back view from the road...

Lawrence probably based the character of Constance Chatterley on a real-life (unmarried) woman from Taormina who took up with a Sicilian farmer. Their naked frolicking in the olive groves apparently shocked the whole town! It seems Lawrence took this germ of a story and from it created his great novel - a book which caused a huge scandal in its day, and for a long time afterwards. Never before had a romantic novel portrayed a sexually liberated woman so explicitly - with hints of a subtle pacifism to boot (Lawrence places Clifford Chatterley in a wheelchair). The novel was finally published in Florence in 1928, but it wasn't until 1960, after a notorious obscenity trial, that it appeared in Britain in its uncensored form.

The other exceptional house in Taormina is the Casa Cuseni, often described as the town's finest residence. It was built in 1905 by the painter Robert Hawthorn Kitson, aided by his friend the artist Frank Brangwyn, who had once been apprenticed to William Morris. Consequently it's a mixture of Sicilian and Art Nouveau/Arts and Crafts Movement styles. This is Kitson's own painting of the front, sea-facing view of the house...

Kitson owned the first motor car in Taormina, which he used to ferry the injured during the earthquake of 1908, and the first swimming pool, which he sited to reflect the moonlit slopes of Mount Etna. After his death in 1948 his niece Daphne Phelps took over this delightful villa, opening it up to paying guests - a story she tells in her book, A House In Sicily (Virago, 1999).

When Daphne herself died in January 2006 at the age of 94, family members found it difficult to keep the house going - and I see it's now up for sale. It had many famous visitors over the years: Bertrand Russell, Tennessee Williams, Henry Faulkner, Roald Dahl - and DH Lawrence, of course (whenever his back was turned, Frieda set about the task of seducing much of the male population of Taormina, including passing tradesman etc, whom she was in the habit of greeting at the door in the nude!)

As readers of this blog will know, DH Lawrence is one of my favourite writers (no mean painter either). His four great novels - Sons And Lovers, The Rainbow, Woman In Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover - I still find wonderful. His travel essays are some of the best ever written in the genre (Sea And Sardinia came out of a visit made to Sardinia from Taormina), and his poetry is powerful, muscular and sensual.

I'd like to do more in-depth posts about Lawrence's writings and artistic philosophy at some point, but in the meantime here's a short extract from his poem The Snake. Lawrence is in the garden of Fontana Vecchia - in his pyjamas because of the heat - when a venomous snake comes for a drink at his water trough. After an internal debate about whether to kill it or not, he half-heartedly throws a log at the snake, which then disappears into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front... Lawrence immediately regrets his cowardly action, and ends up despising the voice inside him which had urged him to be a man and kill the snake.

Someone was before me at my water trough,
And I, like a second-comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On that day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

I know of no other poem about an animal, and about a relationship between a man and an animal, quite as powerful as this one - though some by Ted Hughes come near. It's a quite extraordinary blend of subjective feeling and objective observation.