Eight kilometres to the north, and many lifetimes away from Noto, lie the remains of its corpse. Here was journey’s … More
Tag: Sicily
History dissembled
Noto, like other cities in the southeast of Sicily, is a near perfect encapsulation of the Sicilian Baroque, built on … More
The island’s amnesiac heart
At the approximate heart of the island of Sicily there is a site which it is hard not to regard … More
The bright glare of professionalism
We were welcomed to the (deep breath) Antonio Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum of Palermo by a dole of small turtles, … More
Time travelling curatorial aesthetics
The visible surface of a museum, which is to say its collections as they are displayed, tells you what sort … More
Traversing epistemologies
The Cattedrale di Palermo is a chimaera of architectural styles and periods. If someone had drawn it from their imagination, … More
History, re-mediated
‘Palazzo’ is a term that is bandied about quite casually in Italy, and although it is technically cognate with ‘palace’, … More
A horizon obscured by banality
I’m generally unimpressed by assertions of a cultural distance between Northern and Southern Europe. Such ideas usually revolve around differing … More
Hybridity reified: a cosmopolitan architecture
Like the gardens of the Orto Botanico, the formal beds and pathways through which one approaches the facade of the … More
A ruptured order
A melancholy sense of lost hegemony and deteriorated grandeur was brought to Britain from southern Europe by the Grand Tourists … More
The truths between instants
‘The camera cannot lie’ is a phrase that has had currency since the last years of the nineteenth century, although … More
The city’s invisible family photographs
The Galleria d’Arte Moderna Sant’Anna is housed in what was once a Franciscan friary. I can’t remember entering it, or … More
The building which commemorates itself
We were advised by our Airbnb host that the Chiesa del Gesù is one of Palermo’s most beautiful baroque churches … More
Moments of erasure
Facing across a busy Palermo street narrow enough to deny its facade any commanding sightlines, the Palazzo Riso-Belmonte is also … More
Oliver Arditi 