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My great grandfather Niccolò Cipollina was born in the Cala, Palermo’s ancient port, in 1899. My great grandmother was born in Villarosa in the Enna province at around the same time. My Sicily roots run deep and it’s one of my favorite places to travel. It’s also a frustrating place to dine out since so many restaurants exist mainly to cater to tou...

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They met in California back in the 1970s when they were both 18 and went on to marry at the age of 21. Over five decades later, Randy Allen and Cindy Harding Nannarelli from the US are both living in Italy with their husbands. In fact, the two couples’ homes in Noto, Sicily are located just a short distance from each other. “We share a lot of meals...

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The most representative city of Sicilian Baroque is eager to enchant you: let it cast its spell. It's difficult to resist such magic when everything around seems somehow dipped in gold. The effect is due to the material used for the buildings erected after the 1693 earthquake, a local stone in amazing golden and pinkish shades. Noto is the highest...

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The beating heart of the Val di Noto is–by no surprise–Noto. The Baroque city, the epicentre of the valley, emerges from the scorched landscape of southern Sicily like a mirage. The contours of its ramparts reflect the light of the brilliant sun and refracts it off the honey-hued stone typical of the area. This is how I remember my first visit to N...

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A magical event that combines religion, folklore and the beauty of nature in spring. If you visit Italy in spring, there is no doubt that the infiorata festivals are a wonderful event to witness. We have already talked about them in this article, collecting what we think are the most beautiful and fascinating ones, from North to South.  Among them,...

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Italy can’t help herself. She looks beautiful, as always, on screen. And she can’t pass up a chance to be the setting of a hit TV show. Of course, that leads to a boom in tourism. This leads to more people falling in love with Italy’s gorgeous settings. Yada yada yada…it’s a vicious cycle. Now that the worst of the pandemic seems to be behind us —...

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Sicily is a Mediterranean paradise, where beauty, culture and history converge - a magical land forged by the mercurial Mount Etna, one of the world's most active volcanoes. Etna's dominating presence metaphorically divides the island into an idyllic east and a bustling west. It's the volcano's mythology and volatility that make Sicily the perfect...

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There are few more universally appreciated moments in design than a dramatic before-and-after reveal—especially when the home in question is an 18th-century Sicilian palace. Palazzo Castelluccio was built by the region’s most prominent patriarch, Marquis di Lorenzo del Castelluccio, in 1782, following the devastating earthquake that struck nearly a...

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Val di Noto, called the Noto Valley in error, is instead a geographical territory in southeastern Italy notable for cities built in the late Sicilian Baroque style. An earthquake in 1693 leveled the towns that existed, requiring them to be rebuilt; the emergency reorganization caused a harmonious and rather homogeneous structure based on the styles...

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From rubble to splendour. How did a small area of Sicily devastated by earthquakes become one of the world's most magical places? The year zero is 1693. On 11 January, a devastating earthquake razed more than 2,000 years of Greek, Byzantine, Arab and Norman history to the ground. What followed was a glorious reconstruction that in just 50 years tur...

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