Here is a quick quiz for the opera aficionado. The biggest opera house in Italy is in Milan, Venice or Palermo? Palermo?Yes, Milan’s La Scala may have more seats, and La Fenice in la Venezia is more venerable by a century, but Palermo’s Teatro Massimo is easily the biggest in Italy, a sprawling, 83,000-square-foot, neo-romantic edifice that dominates the Sicilian capital’s antique skyline. In Europe, only L’Opéra in Paris and the State Opera in Vienna are bigger.

The Teatro Massimo is not nearly as well-known internationally as those other theaters, but it is an opera house with a back story that few artistic venues can match. That in turn has contributed to bold experimentation in bringing high culture to a troubled community. Superintendent Francesco Giambrone, a medical doctor by training who administers the Teatro, invites visitors to its terra-cotta and copper-clad rooftop, some 250 feet above street level (and reached by ladder from the eight-story-high backstage), for both the view and the parable it represents.