Theresa Maggio

Last night the Italian Coast Guard saved 270 immigrants found in dire straits at sea, including about 50 women and children, according to La Repubblica Palermo online. All the immigrants were all right despite being exhausted by their difficulties and the cold.. They all came from the sub-Saharan countries of Mali, Cameroon, Nigeria, Congo, Guinea and  Read More 

Police overnight made 64 arrests from Villagrazia, the easternmost neighborhood of Palermo to S. Giuseppe Jato, a mafia stronghold in the hills behind Palermo. Turns out the mafia has been reorganizing under the guidance of two elders, one in his seventies, one in his eighties. These are old-style mafiosi who were henchmen of Toto Riina, the now jailed mafia kingpin known as The Beast. Read More 

Today Palermo Mayor Leoluca welcomed the president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Laura Boldrini, to his city.
"Welcome to Palermo, ...city of refuge, where diversity is a resource," were his words to her. Boldrini is an Italian journalist and politician who has been President of the Chamber of Deputies of Italy since 16 March 2013.  Read More 

At the intersection of Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Via Maqueda in the heart of the old town, the Quattro Canti is also known as the theater of the sun. I do not know who took this fine picture, but whoever it was lay down in the center of a busy intersection on a cloudless day and shot upward toward the cerulean blue sky. Read More 

And these are not squatters. There are people who pay dearly to live in a place like this. I know this little piazzetta well because I saw it every day when I visited the Le Balate Library for Children and Babies just a block away.

Thanks to a heads-up from fellow Sicily lover Karen LaRosa of LaRosaWorks.com:

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Construction on King Ferdinand IV's Palazzina Cinese in La Favorita Park began in 1799. Chinoiserie was all the rage then, and this was the second Chinese-type house Ferdinand owned and was designed by the same architect.

The Liberty style mosaic of Demeter, Sicilian goddess of grain and agriculture known as the Doll of the Capo because she adorned the front of a bakery in the Capo market has been restored. She and the bakery sign were removed from the decrepit building (the bakery had gone out of business after many  Read More 

I read in La Repubblica that the tonnara is coming back to Favignana, but just to draw tourists, and the men will not lift the tuna in teams of eight with lances of varying lengths as they used to. To know what a tonnara used to be like, please read my first book, Mattanza.  Read More 

Entering these sumptuous old palaces in downtown Palermo is always a revelation. This one is in Piazza Bologni on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Palermo's oldest street.

The Italian Navy ship Bettica rescued a hundred migrants from motorized rubber raft in trouble in the Strait of Sicily today according to La Repubblica. Among the 100 migrants were seven women and 20 minors. Now that spring is coming, the migrant traffic, and subsequent deaths from drowning, will pick up.
The EU offers asylum to  Read More