Palermo book

One after another, the footsteps along the streets of Palermo, soles on its cobblestones, draw the shape of opposites. Palermo is squalor and nobility; slowness and theatrical chaos; whimsy and deference. Palermo is light like nowhere else and darkness that can reach the most remote abysses. Palermo, in short, is charm. But a complex charm, never truly accessible. "Palermo is an onion," Roberto Alajmo would say - for when you think you've reached its heart, it shows you another layer. Thus, this little book aims to be a kind of dictionary. An itinerary through the city's many selves, moving through the people who have lived there and the words that have described it; the stories that have inhabited it and the legends that have colored it; it passes through its flavors, waves, scents, domes, saints and traditions. It passes through opposites and pierces through the layers, to unmask the rawest beauty that this city jealously guards.

Book in Italian or English