My eleven hour train ride from Naples turned out to be just the rest I needed, and it rained most of the way, so it was a good day to avoid that. Finally around 7:30pm I arrived in Palermo in Sicily and found my hotel for the night, slept, and then hit the streets first thing in the morning. Just a little sidenote, Sicily has what has got to be one of the craziest flags in the world. The three legs simply represent the three corners of the island, but it’s kind of a crazy way to visualize it. Apologies for the tree in the way.

Anyway, I started my time at the archeology museum just down the street from my hotel. Mostly they focused on artifacts from the Sicilian archeology sites of Segesta and Selinunte, more on them later. And they had turtles!

Palermo is still primarily known as a mafia city, unfortunately. I didn’t think it was such a problem anymore, but while I was here there was a big story about them arresting a big mafia boss. Guess it’s still a problem after all. On the more positive side, though, Palermo is known for it’s street food. I’ve been pretty much living on Arancine, rice balls with either ragú or ham and mozzarella in the center and fried. So good! And the streets sometimes hide nice surprise views.

Palermo isn’t typically known as a tourist town, but a visit to Sicily without checking out Palermo’s hidden gems would be almost criminal. Here they have a hodge podge of classical renaissance, baroque, Byzantine, Arab, and Spanish influences. There’s also a fair amount of run down qualities due to the amount of destruction Palermo experienced during WWII, but it’s definitely got character. Below is Porta Felice, Palermo’s former northern gate and sea port.

Speaking of Arab and Norman influences, both the Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio and Chiesa di San Cataldo, on Piazza Bellini, were both originally planned as mosques, but became Christian churches instead.

On the other side of Piazza Bellini is the Chiesa di Santa Caterina d’Alessandria. It’s a beautiful church, but the best part was climbing up to the roof for the views over Palermo.

From the roof I also got a birds eye view of the famous Fontana Pretoria. The city bought this beautiful giant fountain in the 16th century, but it seems the religious, church-going Sicilians disapproved of all the nudity and so called it the Fountain of Shame. Ha!

Historically speaking, Palermo’s heyday was in the 12th century when it was the seat of the Norman monarchy. Below is the Porta Nuova, the old southern entrance to the city.

The Palazzo Normanni was originally built in the 9th century, but got a huge 12th century Norman makeover. Inside is the glittering gold mosaic Capella Palatina. It’s supposedly Palermo’s biggest tourist attraction. I don’t know about that, but it was pretty amazing.

Further south, out of the main historical district is what is probably Palermo’s oddest site to see, the Catacombe dei Cappuccini. Around eight thousand or so of Palermo’s 17th to 19th centuries dearly departed are on display.

I can’t say I totally understand the Capuchin habit of displaying bodies like this, but it is fascinating!

The bodies are still separated according to social classes to this day. These two dudes were military officers. The dude on the bottom was a colonel, not sure about the dude on the top.

The Capuchin monks themselves get a separate section.

Finally, a visit to Palermo’s cathedral. There wasn’t a whole lot of info I could find about it, but it’s really impressive from the outside.

The only thing of real importance inside is the giant alter to Saint Rosalia (below left), the patron Saint of Palermo. Supposedly, the alter contains Rosalia’s bones, but in 1825, a visiting geologist said they were from a goat. Who knows? Locals invoke her during times of plaque and apparently she’s been quite busy the last three years.

My planned day trips for this section turned out to be a major headache. To get to the ruins of Segesta, I would’ve had to take one bus company all the way to Trapani, then another bus company from there to Segesta, and back. The second bus company’s website wouldn’t let me buy a ticket without a European tax ID, which I obviously don’t have. The buses trying to get to the other site, Selinunte, were equally challenging. So I just rented a car and visited them both in one day. Ironically, the one day car rental ended up being cheaper than all those bus tickets would’ve been.

Segesta, built in the 5th century BC, is a pretty small site. There are the remnants of town walls, a couple of villas, a church, a mosque, and the Agora. Most of it is indistinguishable, but the unfinished Doric temple, a type of Greek construction, and the theatre are spectacular.

It was a windy cold day, but the views of surrounding rural Sicily from the hills were stunning just the same.

Clear down on the southern coast of Sicily are the ruins of Selinunte. Apparently, the inhabitants of Selinunte and Segesta hated each other. Segesta was wiped out by time, but Selinunte was wiped out by violence. There are several temples left here, but they don’t even know what they were for, so today they are labeled Tempio A, B, C, etc. Most of them are just piles of rubble. Tempio E, however, is still standing strong.

At the other end of the site, about a mile and a half away, one wall of Tempio C is still hanging on as well.

After my quick visit to Selinunte, I returned my car back in Palermo, had an amazing dinner and got ready for another train ride tomorrow. Just a short one this time. My time in Palermo may be done, but I’m not finished with Sicily just yet, so stay tuned…