The day of three weddings but no funerals,
and of big church art.
We drove by car to Monreale, a hill suburb of Palermo. The drive was extremely slow
due to heavy morning traffic, with lots of standing still. The big attraction
in Monreale is the Duomo. It is
fantastically decorated in mosaics from top to bottom. This is the work of the
son of the man who decorated the Capella
Palatina (two days ago) and the church in Castelbuono (yesterday). A wedding was in progress here. We did the
optional climb up onto the roof for some extra views, also of the attached
cloister courtyard. We took the latter in at ground level. The notable aspect
of the cloister was the unique set of column capitals – each different. In the
corner was a fountain from Arab times.
We headed back to town and elected to drive
semi-randomly through the city in the general direction of our hotel. Driving
here in Palermo is certainly an immersive experience and I understand why many
foreigners are horrified. Drivers here may be insistent, but they are generally
not aggressive. They are used to flowing around anything that is slower or
blocking their way. If you leave a gap, someone will fill it – nothing wrong
with that. Formal lanes and lane markings are totally irrelevant. People park
anywhere, especially where it says it’s a tow-away zone. Double parking? No
worries. Parking on pedestrian crossings? Ditto. Parking on the footpath?
Likewise. On our way to dinner one car was parked three wheels transverse to
the footpath for four nights running.
After a cheap lunch at a corner bar and the obligatory siesta, we headed off on foot toward the Quattro Canti (Four Corners) intersection. By chance we happened on the market area and browsed through there, picking up three pairs of socks for €1.50 (disposable). Everything was on sale here – fruit, vegetables, meat, tourist stuff. There seemed to be some argy-bargy between locals and darker-skinned imports, but we passed blithely around them. This was all in narrow lanes, with the tables out in the street. Despite this there were moped scooters passing every which way.
After three days here I’m starting to get it.
There are many interesting and attractive features of the city and its life.
However, you don’t have to look far off the main streets to see the
impoverished living conditions of the mainly immigrant population. The suburb
our hotel is located in was equated by Mother Theresa to the slums of Calcutta.
She set up a mission here and shamed the government into making improvements.
Near the four corners we entered the Church
of Jesus only to find that a wedding was in progress. The priest was well into his matrimonial
oration – he was an old but lively chap, and it seemed like he was hoeing into
the evils to be avoided. All the while the bridal couple was kneeling in front of
the altar. This was another church highly decorated in mosaics, but because of
the wedding, we decided to come back later, when it was almost empty.
Nearby was the Church of Martorana (12th century
originally planned as a mosque) that was closed two days ago. Today it was
open, but another wedding was in progress there so we left again after a short
while. Interesting was that part of the service was in English. We returned
later just as the service had concluded. This was a church beautifully decorated
in the Greek style. We watched the wedding party slowly make their way into the
Piazza Bellini moving toward an
adjacent church we seen two days ago. We thought, crikey, they’re having
another service (maybe multi-denominational), but it turns out they were only
gathering on that church’s steps for a photo session.
In Palermo,
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