Palermo by Jennie Hart

Sicilian capital, Palermo, has a strong pulse and a beating heart. It takes your breath away and adds it to its own. There is beauty in the narrow streets and the broad corsos. Palazzos and churches, piazzas and gardens, decorate the urban landscape. Mountains form a bold back-drop and the blue ocean a delicate frill.

Luxury yachts, like four by fours, have taken over the harbour, shrinking the space for fishermen whose livelihoods depend on the sea.

La Martorana, a medieval chiesa, received its name from the convent it was given to by the Spanish. Ignore the Baroque makeover; the ribbed arches and slender columns are graceful works of art.

There’s a wedding and the bride is in a gorgeous white gown. The young women guests are mostly in black. These tall girls, with brown legs and high heels, belong on the catwalk. Will they become like the bride’s mother who is plump in pink and green?

The chapel within the twelfth century Norman Palazzo, is a breath-taking, memorable sanctuary. It trembles with mosaics in vivid colours, configured in Arabic motifs, entwining and spiralling like a medieval parterre.

But Palermo is also squalid and dirty. It is drowning in tattered brown leaves and flattened popcorn cartons. ’Mia Amore’ says a discarded box from a little girl’s doll. ‘Il fumo uccide’ say packets emptied of Galoises, but no one takes any notice. Cigarette ends are strewn under park benches and towering pines, in alleyways and gutters, speaking of addiction.

Walk along the water’s edge of Aspra, a small town near Palermo, but don’t dare to swim. Pollution has spoiled our beautiful ocean, reads a notice by the sands. Try lying on the beach and a bad odour tangles in the nostrils. Dogs were here today, and yesterday.

There’s a dead rat displaying its entrails. Wild bees with bronze wings and yellow tattoos throb around and gorge on the creature, droning and buzzing. It’s a sickening sight. We came by train, just fourteen kilometres to a station with two rails, up and down. No one obeys the order not to walk across the track. Everybody ‘walks the line’, not the subway, except us and the worn-out.

A special exhibition has exquisite works and I study a Caravaggio. Two people ignore my presence and stand in front of me. They want to see the painting and ignore me completely, so now I cannot see. I want to shout at them but I do not have their language.

There is graffiti everywhere, some of it inspired, but this vibrant, sun-kissed, intoxicating city and its people defeat the squalor and grime. We were shown friendship almost everywhere and drink coffee with a young couple who may come and stay. Patrizia is Spanish but the young man is Sicilian and irresistible. Why? Because his name was Salvo, just like Montalbano!