A little city, a little country in Sicily

Tom Moulson

My wife, Tita, and I have just fulfilled an ambition to see Sicily.

We took a coach tour starting and ending in Rome, landing in Sicily

at Messina by ferry from the toe of Italy.

Sicily is an island shaped like a triangle with its apex in the

south. Our route now would be down the east coast to Taormina and

Syracuse, across the interior to the Agrigento on the south coast,

and finally north to Palermo, the capital city, before the flight

back to Rome. The six days in Sicily provided a good mix of coast and

interior, city and country, ancient and modern.

Two thousand years before Columbus, Sicily was the Greeks’ New

World, a fertile colony beckoning settlement.

The Greeks left their mark and then some. Their theater built in

Taormina in the third century BC is set high in the hills with a

spectacular view of the bay. Syracuse, farther south, is where the

Athenian empire was destroyed when, attempting to seize the country

from their Spartan rivals, the Athenian fleet was ambushed and the

harbor waters literally reddened with blood.

At Agrigento, on the south coast, is the Valley of the Temples,

seven in all. The Greeks built their temples on high ground to be

closer to the gods. Many gods meant many temples.

The elegance of these designs owes much to the bending of things

so they look straight. The bases curve upward while the columns curve

outward. Also, lengthwise, there are always twice as many columns

plus one as there is widthwise, for example 13 and six.

Temples were the triumph of Greek genius and several hundred

thousand slaves. Now brown, worn and roofless, they were originally

coated in stucco made of finely-ground white marble.

The Villa of Piazza Amerina in central Sicily is not Greek but the

ruin of a large, opulent Roman estate. Its complex of walls and

floors is covered in colored mosaics of great variety depicting

animals, warfare, and even pornography -- perhaps a 300 BC Graceland.

We were struck by the depiction of young women in bikinis working

out, just as though in Tita’s gym in Newport Beach.

On the drive to our last overnight, Palermo, we visited the

ancient town of Erice, set atop a 2,000-foot peak. This cluster of

castle, old houses and twisted, cobbled streets was the most westerly

settlement of the Greeks.

On our final leg to from there to Palermo, we passed by the

“Godfather”-famed village of Corleone, but not through it. We did,

however, see the steps of the Opera House in Palermo where the

Godfather saga closed.

Coach tours are a combination of limo service and boot camp, of

pampering interspersed with strict early morning departures and long

hikes. We were kept in line by a whip-cracking female tour director

and peer pressure. In no other way could we have experienced so much,

with such ease, in so short a time.

So, if you want to see much and learn much, take a tour. And an

alarm clock.

* TOM MOULSON is a Corona del Mar resident.

* TRAVEL TALES runs on Thursdays. Have you, or someone you know,

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