Palermo, Capitol of Sicily

Palermo is the capitol of Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. The majority of our stay in Italy was spent on this wonderful island.

In every Sicilian town, the symbol of Sicily can be purchased, usually in pottery. The three bare legs represent the three capes in Sicily. If you note on the map, Sicily is shaped like a triangle. The three ears of wheat surrounding the head of Medusa represent the extreme fertility of Sicily. The central head of Medusa, the destructive aspect of the Greek goddess Athena, signifies the protection of the island by that goddess, the patron goddess of Sicily. The hair on the head of the gorgon is a snake intertwined with stalks of wheat, to which three legs bent at the knee are attached.

Right: Our hotel in Palermo, the Fredericko II who was King of Sicily (1198-1212). Frederick established in Sicily and southern Italy something very much like a modern, centrally governed kingdom with an efficient bureaucracy. Our guide, Marta, pointed out many castles that were built by Fredericko II.

Our hotel was really nice. Irt looks modest from the outside, but inside, it was grand.

Left: Our first and only night in Palermo we ate in an outdoor cafe. Left to Right: Jean Dyson, Sherri, Wayne Carey, and Jane Carey.

The Teatro Massimo is a truly elegant venue. Palermo, the capitol of Sicily, was founded in 734 BC by the Phonecians, and is today a cultural center. The Teatro was opened in 1897. Enrico Caruso sang in a performance of La Gioconda during the opening season, returning for Rigoletto at the very end of his career. The evening we walked by, there was an all-Mozart concert about to begin. Had I known, I would have purchased tickets for the performance.

The Grand Hotel in Palermo is being renovated. It has a fascinating history. Originally a villa, it hosted old and sick cantankerous German Richard Wagner, along with his wife, Cosima Liszt, as the composer created part of his famous opera, Parsifal, while a guest in 1882. A little while later, Renoir the painter, popped in to paint Wagner's portrait; and French writer Guy de Maupassant also made a visit. The villa was purchased by entomologist Enrico Ragusa and converted into a hotel in 1907, by the same architect who designed the magnificent Teatro Massimo opera house which is up the street a ways. American playwright Arthur Miller came on a visit to Sicily and stayed here.

Francis Ford Coppola and Al Pacino (whose grandparents emigrated to America from Corleone) stopped by when they were in Sicily during the production of the film The Godfather. Coppola allegedly had his own bed shipped to the hotel from America. The hotel also hosted actress Sophia Loren, musician Ray Charles. Burt Lancaster was a guestin the early 1960s during the shooting of The Leopard, the film adaptation of Sicily's most famous book of the same name. Ava Gardner, the Hollywood movie star was a customer at the hotel while filming in Sicily in 1960.

Sliding in and out from time to time was a squat, coarse-looking, peasant of a man, always dressed in rough clothes, stained by the tobacco he continually chewed. This was Giuseppe Genco Russo, the Mafia boss of Mussomeli and thought by many as the successor to the late Don Calogero Vizzini as the top Mafia figure on the island. The hotel staff hated him for his disgusting habit of spitting onto the carpets.

Sometime around the middle of October 1957, (different sources give different dates) it supposedly hosted a congress of Sicilian and American Mafiosi who gathered for a few days in the Sala Azzurra the Blue Room, which can hold up to eighty, to talk about crime and drugs and whatever gangsters chit-chat about when they aren’t running around killing each other. Twenty-five years later, Palermo was the heroin capitol of the world.

Giuseppe di Stefano for close to fifty years wandered through the hallways chomping on a fat Cuban, Romeo and Juliet cigar. He would have to be the most fascinating and elusive of all the guests who ever stayed at a hotel, anywhere in the world. And the longest, permanently paying client, without fear of competition. A

He was a man of immense wealth, a landowner of some magnitude allegedly living at the hotel in exile, banished there by the Mafia. The man believed to be controlling the destiny of Di Stefano would have been Giuseppe Marotta, capo of the Castelvetrano Mafia clan in the troublesome times following the end of World War II.

Lucky Luciano stayed at the Grand in April 1946 when he was thrown out of the US and deported back to Sicily, his birth place. Luciano returned to the hotel for the third time on March 23rd, 1961, for a two-day visit, staying in Room 216.

In July, 1937, a British secret agent was allegedly knifed to death in room 242. In 1961, a man thought to be an envoy of some authority, while spying it was believed on the Mafia, fell seven stories down through the skylight into the lobby. Giovanni Di Carlo, the hotel's maintenance manager, along with two other men removed the body, leaving only shattered glass, bloodstains and an English wristwatch among the debris.

This is the hotel as it used to and how it will be after the renovations are complete. I was fascinated by its history, and there is so much more to the story. However, I will spare my reader more of the historical facts of this Palermo hotel. Although I wish I could say that I remembered all of the above from our tour guide, but that would be a fib. The facts I've noted come from various Google searches.