SICILY: An Enchanted Island of Ancient ruins and Rugged Beauty

When Lucy and I first told friends that we planned to start our honeymoon in Sicily we generally got one of two responses: “Great!” or “Sicily?”

The latter response was almost invariably voiced in tones that suggested we were either very dumb or very kinky.

“Sicily?” asked one such friend, an editor at this newspaper. “Why Sicily? It’s just a bunch of rocks that’ve been invaded by every army in the world for 2,000 years.”

Well, yes--more than 2,000 years, in fact. The Phoenicians and Greeks both invaded Sicily more than 500 years before Christ, and they were followed by the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Barbarians, the Saracens, the Normans, the descendants of Frederick Barbarossa, the followers of Garibaldi and, of course, the Germans. Clearly, a perfect spot for a honeymoon.

So why Sicily? Well, we were going to be married in Milan, where Lucy’s parents now live, so starting our honeymoon in Italy seemed a good idea. And we wanted to go somewhere neither of us had been. Besides, we both like ancient ruins and rugged natural beauty, both of which Sicily is justly celebrated for, and we figured that all those invasions might make for intriguing layers of history as well.

After overcoming every obstacle the Italian bureaucracy could possibly put in our way, we were duly married in Milan, immediately after which we had a stunning, five-hour wedding lunch at our favorite restaurant in Italy, Aimo e Nadia. Then after an hour’s delay for unspecified mechanical problems on our airplane, we flew off to Sicily, filled with dire warnings about Mafiosi, pickpockets and assorted other banditos.

We had also been warned that Sicily was a bit primitive, but we weren’t prepared for the cab driver who took our bags at the airport and strapped them to the roof of his cab. His trunk, he told us, was broken.

We drove for what seemed a very long time, stopping periodically to be sure our bags remained securely fastened, and when our driver began to slow down as he entered what looked to be a seedy neighborhood on the outskirts of Palermo--our first stop--we glanced uneasily at each other. But our hotel, the Villa Igiea, was behind walls, completely separated from its shabby surroundings. Once we checked in, any misgivings we might have had quickly evaporated.

We had a large, lovely room, with a terrace overlooking the bay, and as we walked around the gardens the next day, sat by the swimming pool and had a drink in the seaside bar with its vaulted, beamed ceilings, we knew we’d made the right choice.

In summer Sicily can be oppressively hot--and jammed with tourists--but this was spring; the weather was almost perfect, and the hordes of sun worshipers had not yet descended on the island.

Palermo is a most interesting place. It’s the capital, primary seaport and largest city on the island, a city in which ancient art and history live side by sad side with modern poverty. Amid all its wonderful sights you’re never far from ramshackle apartments, with laundry hung out on the balcony to dry, and poor, dirty children scuffling about barefoot.

In the center of town the Quattro Canti (four corners) are a Spanish baroque ensemble of statues honoring saints and kings and seasons, rising one above the other in stony tribute.

The Palatine Chapel in the Palace of the Normans, where the Sicilian Parliament convenes, was built in the 12th Century on the highest hill in the oldest part of Palermo. It remains a remarkable melange of Moorish, Arabic and Norman art and architecture, Byzantine mosaics and royal apartments that afford a lovely view of the city below.

The Capuchin Catacombs contain about 8,000 mummies, some of them children and many of them still fully dressed and startlingly well-preserved by the extremely dry air within.

In addition, Palermo has three charming outdoor squares, picturesque churches, a cathedral that blends the Gothic with the Norman, an interesting museum and a surprisingly good restaurant, Charleston, with a fine collection of older Italian wines (many of which, alas, have gone bad in the Mediterranean heat).

From Palermo it’s an easy drive west to the pretty medieval village of Erice on a hilltop high above the sea, and to the town of Monreale, famous for its Benedictine abbey with 12th-Century mosaics and bronze doors by Bonanno Pisano, who also helped fashion the doors for the cathedral in Pisa. One guidebook calls the abbey “one of the architectural wonders of the Middle Ages.”

But our favorite side trip from Palermo was to Segesta, a town destroyed by the Saracens in AD 1000. As we cruised through the green hills we suddenly saw--in the distance, alone, glistening in the afternoon sun--the 5th Century BC Temple of Segesta. You can park and walk to and through the temple, examining each of its 36 Doric columns, but it’s most striking from a distance, sitting on a hillside like a giant ocean liner on a vast, still sea.

We were equally dazzled by the ruins on our next stop, in the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, especially when we first opened the draperies in our room at the Hotel Villa Athena and found ourselves looking directly across the valley at the Temple of Concord, the most impressive of all the ruins in the valley.

We could see the temple clearly from our bed and our large terrace as well. I was captivated by the sight, and sat on the terrace looking at its flood-lit splendor after dinner that night, and did so again the next morning while eating breakfast. (I’d heartily recommend our room, No. 205, if such sights appeal to you.)

The Temple of Concord and the other ruins in the valley, the Temples of Hercules, Juno and Jupiter, the Greco-Roman Quarter, plus the various tombs and churches, are said to be the finest collection of Greek ruins outside Greece, and they’re all within walking distance of the hotel. We spent an enchanting afternoon strolling among them, trying to imagine what they looked like when built 2,000 to 2,500 years ago.

The next morning, as we drove to Taormina on the east coast, we commented on how much prettier the Sicilian countryside was than we’d been led to believe. Even a friend who was born in Sicily, Los Angeles restaurateur Piero Selvaggio, hadn’t mentioned that aspect of Sicily’s allure to us.

He and several other friends had, however, told us about the colorful mosaics in the Villa Imperiale at Piazza Armerina, so we stopped and looked at them on our way to Taormina. The villa, an old country estate of four connecting buildings, dates from the 4th Century BC, and the mosaics date from about the 4th Century AD. The villa was destroyed, abandoned and buried in a landslide in the 12th Century, and the ruins weren’t rediscovered until 1761. Renovation went on sporadically, beginning in about 1881.

The buildings are protected from the weather by a hard plastic encasement that also protects tourists from the summer heat. We walked through the villa with hundreds of other tourists, the only time we saw so many in our week on the island, moving from room to room and marveling at the mosaics that depict hunting scenes, the Labors of Hercules and various domestic and historic activities.

We saved the best of Sicily for last: San Domenico Palace, an old Dominican monastery converted to a 117-room luxury hotel.

As we walked past the inner courtyard and down the narrow, dimly lit halls with doors lining both walls, we could almost envision the monks who slept within so many centuries ago. But there was nothing monastic about the suite we’d reserved, and, once again, we found ourselves amid splendor, overlooking the sea.

We visited the 3rd Century BC Greek Theater in Taormina (Lucy sneered when I said I thought I could hear the strains of Neil Diamond singing there, as he periodically does in the Greek Theater in Los Angeles), and walked along the cobbled streets of the town. One afternoon we took a hydrofoil out to the Lipari Islands . . . and then it was time to leave Sicily.

Selvaggio, our Sicilian friend back home, had worried that we might not enjoy Sicily enough to warrant spending a week here, but we decided that 10 days, perhaps two weeks, would have been even better. We hadn’t visited Messina, Syracuse or Cefalu, and we hadn’t climbed Mt. Etna. We hadn’t spent a night with the volcanoes of Stromboli. And we hadn’t even seen any pickpockets or Mafiosi.

Maybe next time.

Villa Igiea Grand Hotel, Salita Belmonte 43, Palermo 90142, Sicily. Telephone: 39-915-43744. Rooms: 270,000 to 340,000 lira ($218 to $275 U.S.) a night. Breakfast, service and taxes included).

Villa Athena, Via dei Templi, Agrigento 92110, Sicily. Telephone: 39-922-23833. Rooms: 178,000 lira ($144) a night. Service, taxes, breakfast and your choice of lunch or dinner included.

San Domenico Palace, Piazza San Domenico 5, Taormina 98039, Sicily. Telephone: 39-942-23701. Rooms: 270,000 to 390,000 lira ($218 to $315) a night. Breakfast, taxes and service included.

(The above rates are based on the current exchange rate of 1,330 lira to $1 U.S.)