Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Siracusa: “My sins are all mortal.”

Caravaggio is one of the bad boys in the history of art with a biography so outlandish it reads like fiction. When he arrived in Sicily in 1608 he was wanted for murder in Rome and had brawled his way across the Mediterranean. There a story of his entering a church in Messina where he was offered a bowl of…

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Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Palermo: No Surface Left Unadorned

The Palatine Chapel is one of those must-see places if ever you have the chance.  It was commissioned by the enlightened Norman King Roger II (Ruggero) and  was consecrated on Palm Sunday 1140. It was designated a UNESCO World heritage site in 2015. It’s inside the palace of the Norman kings of Sicily that now serves as Sicily’s seat of the regional…

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Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Palermo: Puppets and Piazzas

It rarely snows in Palermo but I was pleased to see the universal winter snowflakes on the windows of the elementary school. Our apartment is near the Piazza Marina in the center of which is the Giardino Garibaldi where  enormous fig trees create what must be welcome shade in the summer. The largest tree in Europe was planted here in…

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