Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Via Roma , running from Stazione Centrale, is a evenhandedly modern addition to the city, all clothes and shoe shops. It’s nothing like as interesting as the parallel Via Maqueda, consisting mostly of tall apartment blocks that conceal hotels, but stick with it as far as the church of Sant’Antonio. Behind here - down the steps - is the sprawling Vucciria market (daily 8am to around 8pm): winding streets radiating out from a small enclosed piazza, wet from the cover and waste of the groaning fish stalls. There are a couple of restaurants, some very basic bars and all manner of food and junk on sale. Other than primeval morning when the action is at its most frenzied, lunchtime is a good time to stroll around here - the stallholders take a break at card schools set up around packing cases and trestle tables, or simply slumber among their produce. The northern limit of the market is marked by the distinctive church of San Domenico (Tues-Fri 9am-11.30pm, Sat & Sun 9am-11.30pm & 5-7pm), with a fine eighteenth-century deception that’s attractively lit up, and an interior of tombs containing a horde of famous Sicilians. Parliamentarians, poets and painters, they’re of little interest to foreigners except to explain the finer points behind Palermitan street naming. The oratory behind the church (Oratorio del Rosario; Mon-Fri 9am-1pm & 3-6.30pm, Sat 9am-1pm; free but tipping is usual) contains stucco work by Serpotta and a masterful Van Dyck altarpiece, painted in 1628 before the artist fled Palermo for Genoa to escape the plague.

From Piazza San Domenico, Via Roma continues north, passing (on the left) Palermo’s main post office, the gargantuan Palazzo delle Poste . Built by the Fascists in 1933, it’s a severe concrete block, with a wide swathe of steps running up to ten unfluted columns that run the length and height of the building itself. The grandiosity of the post office is brought down to size by the sixteenth-century convent behind, which now houses the Museo Archeologico Regionale (daily 9am-1.15pm, also Tues, Wed & Fri 3-6.15pm; L8000/¬4.13), a magnificent collection of artefacts, mainly from the western half of the island, displayed on three floors. Two cloisters hold anchors and other retrieved hardware from the sea off the Sicilian coast, Egyptian and Punic remains in rooms to either side, and Roman sculpture - notably a giant enthroned Zeus. In rooms at the far end of the cloisters are numerous stelae and other inscribed tablets, and reconstructions of the assembled stone lion’s head water spouts from the so-called “Victory Temple” at Himera (fifth century BC), the fierce animal faces tempered by braided fur and a grooved tongue which channelled the water. There are also finds from the temple site of Selinunte, on the southwest coast of the island, highpoint of which - indeed of the museum - is the Salone di Selinunte , a room that gathers together the richly carved metopes from the various temples. Sculpted panels from the friezes which once adorned the temples, the metopes are appealing works of art depicting lively mythological scenes: the earliest, dating from the sixth century BC, are those representing the gods of Delphi, the Sphynx, the rape of Europa, and Hercules and the Bull. But it’s the friezes from Temples C and F that really catch the eye, vivid fifth-century-BC works - such as Perseus beheading the Medusa with a short sword. Upstairs has also plenty to reward a lengthy dawdle: lead water pipes with stopcock excavated from a site at Términi Imerese, some 12,000 votive terracotta figures, and two bronze sculptures - the life-like figure of an signal ram (third century BC), originally one of a pair, and the glistening, muscular study of Hercules subduing a stag, found at Pompeii.

The juxtaposition of different styles begins again in serious if you cross back over Via Roma and head towards the water. The church of Santa Zita (also called Santa Cita, or San Mamiliano), on quiet Via Squarcialupo, suffered grave alteration during the war, though it has since been restored, and is justly known for its marvellous oratory (Mon-Fri 9am-1pm & 3-6pm, Sat 9am-1pm; ring the bell if closed, or ask in the church in front): repository of one of Serpotta’s finest works - the Battle of Lépanto - and some rich mother-of-pearl benches. Striking wealth indeed when you step back outside and consider the neighbourhood, the depressed inertia of whose streets spreads to the thumb-shaped inlet of the old harbour, La Cala . This was once the main port of Palermo, stretching as far inland as Via Roma, but the rot set in during the sixteenth century when silting caused the water to recede to its current position. All the heavy work eventually moved northwards to docks off the remodelled postwar streets, and La Cala has been left to the few fishing boats that still work out of Palermo.

Tags: 9am, apartment blocks, clothes, distinctive church, fish, fri, good time, Hotels, lunchtime, packing cases, piazza, restaurants, san domenico, sant antonio, shoe shops, stazione centrale, trestle tables, vucciria