Just east of Palermo, barely ten miles away along the Sicilian coast, sits Bagheria, Baarìa in the local dialect, a name some trace to the Phoenicians and others to an Arabic phrase for “the gate of the wind.” If you follow Page 6 news, you may have heard about it, for a reason that would have astonished its eighteenth-century founders: this June, the pop star Dua Lipa married the actor Callum Turner in one of its old aristocratic villas.
Dua Lipa’s Sicilian wedding took place at Villa Valguarnera, a vast Baroque mansion of the early seventeenth century, before a guest list of some two hundred names, including the likes of Elton John, who serenaded the couple at the piano, Donatella Versace, and Charli XCX. The bride wore the first wedding gown of Chanel’s new couture line, a few days after a quieter civil ceremony back in London.
