Italy (Sicily, Sardinia, and Rome) May 2025

This post contains the highlights of my 3-week-long trip to Sicily, Sardinia, and Rome (May 2-23, 2025) and was written to share with grandkids. 

A note about the images: I'd learned from past trips that when you're at a famous site, sometimes it's best just to leave your camera in its case and enjoy the moment because there's already a photo on the internet that is much better than anything you could take. So some of the photos here were taken by me or someone with me, while others are from the internet. I've noted the ones I got from the internet. The drawings are all from the internet, though I altered many in Photoshop. 

   

I went with a group of 22 people. Peter and I went to high school together, and he grew up to be an college art professor. While he was teaching, he took many trips to Italy with his students to show them the art and architecture. After he retired, he didn't want to stop traveling, so now he takes groups of his friends and relatives.  

First, we traveled around Sicily for twelve days. Sicily is part of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. 

Then we took a plane to Sardinia, which is also a part of Italy and traveled around there for seven days. (Sardines were named for this island.) 

After the group broke up, I stayed in Rome for two nights instead of coming straight home. This map shows where we visited.

 SICILY

The island has a volcano, Mount Etna, which is the most active volcano in Europe. None of the eruptions are very strong so people can live nearby and not get hurt. We saw Etna only briefly as we left the airport. 

 The most recent big eruption of Mount Etna was
 in early June, right after we left. It's not erupting in this photo.
(internet)

A worse problem for Sicily is earthquakes. About once every century (100 years), a bad earthquake destroys many buildings and kills many people.

Sicily's most recent really bad earthquake was in 1908. (internet)

People from Greece came to Sicily 2,800 years ago. The oldest buildings we saw in Sicily were at a place called Agrigento. The ancient city had huge, gleaming white temples on top of tall green cliffs, towering over white beaches and blue sea. People who sailed by, like Pindar, a Greek poet, said that it was the most beautiful city in the world. Plato, a Greek philosopher, wrote that the people of Agrigento built their temples to last forever, but partied like there was no tomorrow.

What part of the city might have looked like when the Greek settlers lived there. (internet)

 

Many buildings fell down during earthquakes, and others were taken apart by the Romans (who came later) to recycle the bricks and marble. The ones still standing are not white anymore. Still, it's fun to walk on the same streets and steps that people have been walking on for thousands of years.

Part of Agrigento today (internet)

 

The ancient buildings featured 'telemons,' or HUGE statues
built into the walls as if they were holding up the roof. 
Over the centuries, earthquakes knocked them down, 
but some have been reassembled for visitors to see.

The remaining buildings are pretty far apart.
You can tell it really was a whole city.

It's easy to see why this was a great spot to build a city. 

There were two other things I really liked about Sicily. 

-1- It is a wonderfully fertile island (good soil, lots of sunshine and water), where people can easily grow lots of beautiful and tasty fruits and vegetables. Every meal was great because of the tasty vegetables ... and seafood they pull from the ocean ... and the wine they make from the grapes ... and the great bread they bake from their wheat--oh, and their olive oil! I noticed that they don't use as much salt, pepper, and herbs as we do (even when we're cooking 'Italian' food), probably because the food itself is so fresh and flavorful, their recipes don't need to be complicated.  

Lemon trees, in particular, were everywhere, and Sicilians use lemons in many food and drinks.
A popular alcoholic beverage is Limoncello, and I loved the light lemonade (limonata). One of my friends called Sicilian cuisine a "lemonado" -- like a lemon tornado.
This was the best picture I got of a vegetable market but many of the markets were even bigger, more colorful, and varied than this.

Notice the french fries in the upper right corner of the second photo. I was surprised that
french fries were on almost every menu. The third photo is 'caponata', a tomato and eggplant
relish? stew? salsa? that they serve at almost every meal. 

 

-2-  Because everyone around the Mediterranean Sea and in Europe has known about the island's wonderful farmland and ports for more than two thousand years, Sicily has been invaded and occupied by many different cultures over the centuries.  

Whenever any new rulers conquered the island, there was fighting, of course, but because everyone came mainly to grow food, most of the island's history has been relatively peaceful. (Even invaders want to keep the farms going.) 

Each culture brought different styles of art and architecture, and often different language and religion. Sometimes the new rulers destroyed much of what the previous culture had built, but not always.  So all these styles are combined and layered on each other in Sicily.

Sicily's best king might have been a man named Roger II, whose father (Roger I) was born in northern France in 1035, about a thousand years ago. Roger I and his brother were part of a group of Vikings who had come to France from Scandinavia called 'Normans', short for 'north men.' (Some of your ancestors were in Scandinavia.) 

 

In 1061 (about 960 years ago), an Arabic king who ruled only part of Sicily wanted to rule it all. He heard that the Normans were good fighters, so he hired Roger I and his brother to come to Sicily to fight another Arabic king who ruled a different part of Sicily. 

But when Roger I and his brother got to Sicily, they realized "Hey, why are we conquering the island for this guy when we could conquer it for ourselves?" So they did. Roger's son became king of Sicily. 

Roger II realized that many different groups of people lived on the island, and he wanted them all to feel comfortable and happy with him as king. To keep the Christian pope in Rome happy, Roger II built only Christian churches and cathedrals. But he told the workers to decorate the churches with art that everyone would like, with signs in different languages. The workers mixed up the different styles--Greek, Roman, Arabic, Byzantine, Norman--really well and ended up with buildings that were just as beautiful and even more interesting than buildings designed with only one style. When different styles are mixed like that, it's called a syncretic style. The kings who followed Roger II also built churches in the Sicilian syncretic style. We visited a couple of these churches. 

The first church that Roger II built is in a town called Cefalu, right beside a huge rock that towers over the city and the church. The rock is called "The Rock." (Sicily rises from the sea where the African continental plate is bumping into the European plate and pushing stuff up, but that's another subject.)

 

Roger's first church in Sicily is that brown building right next to the rock.
The two big towers in front are typical of Norman churches. (internet)

I climbed up inside one of the towers and took these photos from the window.

 

The towers also have a few windows where you can see 
back into the church. Look at how small the people are at the front.
The next photo is what they are looking at.

 

The inside is decorated with mosaics, which are pictures made of tiny tiles.
Many of the tiles were made with real gold baked into the glaze.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's the main mosaic, closer up. 
The words are written in both Greek and Latin, the Romans' language 
because Roger wanted everyone to be able to read it.
(internet)

I think it is so amazing that the artists create such pretty pictures
using only tiny pieces of colored tile. They cannot blend colors the way 
they could if they were using paint. Also, the colors don't change
over the years, like paint does. These are the colors the artist chose 1,000 years ago.(internet)

The artists made their designs and pictures partly in Roman style; partly in 
Byzantine style; partly in Arabic style; and partly in Norman style.
Roger wanted the people in Sicily to know he respected them all.
(He was nice to Jews, too, but maybe their styles were not 
fancy enough for Roger's churches.)

The church has an attached 'treasury' where they keep
other art work and precious objects. These 700-year old statues were
right on the floor; you could kneel beside them if you wanted.

I went down to the beach but did not go swimming.
The water was SO clear and blue!

A couple years after building the Cefalu church, Roger II built a smaller but even fancier chapel inside his palace in a city called Palermo, called the Palatine Chapel. Later, one of Roger II's sons built another church called Monreale that had gold tiles not just on the front walls, but all over the whole inside of the church. 

Click on this photo of the Palatine Chapel to see it large. That 900-year-old ceiling is a Byzantine style, made of intricate shapes deeply carved into wood and then painted in many colors and gold.
(internet)

Here's a close-up photo of the muqarna, from Palatine Chapel ceiling,
a style call 'muqarna.' 

The ceiling at Monreale was also amazing, It had to be rebuilt in the 1800s, but 
they tried to recreate the 850-year old ceiling as well as they could. 
It is made of wood beams and planks, painted and gold-coated.

The walls of Roger's and William's cathedrals tell stories in pictures,
because most people in those days could not read, and so could
learn Bible stories only from pictures.

Noah's Ark, as shown in the Palatine Chapel

This is God giving life to Adam, as shown 
on the wall of the Monreale Cathedral.

 

 

 

 

 

I got one photo in Monreale that comes close
to capturing the sparkle of the gold tiles.

 SARDINIA

Sardinia has the same great food that Sicily has, but it isn't in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and so wasn't invaded by as many people. In addition, it has more mountains where people can hide from invaders, and so Sardinia has a really great thing about their history that Sicily doesn't: Its indigenous people survived. ("Indigenous" people are the ones who lived in a place before anyone else came from other countries.)

Because they lived in prehistoric times (that is, before anyone wrote anything down), we don't know what Sardinia's indigenous people called themselves, but nowadays we call them the Nuraghic civilization. 

When the Romans invaded their island, the Nuraghic people went up into the mountains, where they survived. To this very day, natives of Sardinia have unique DNA that proves that they are the descendants of the prehistoric Nuragic people.   

The Nuraghic people created stone villages with huge towers around 3,700 years ago, during what's called the Bronze Age.  (As humans evolved, they first worked with stones--that's called the "Stone Age." Then they learned to make better tools, pots, and weapons with bronze--that's called the Bronze Age, and then iron, called the Iron Age.)

 

This is a very good video about Nuraghi -- I really recommend it. 

 

Modern-day Sardinians have been digging up these Nuraghic towers (which got covered with dirt over the centuries until they looked like hills), and now you can walk around in them, and we did. Walking in buildings that someone built almost 4,000 years ago!!!!!

First, we visited a Nuraghi museum that had a model we could look at.

 

The museum also had a walkway over a part of a Nuraghi
that archeologists are still digging out.

Walking up to the Nuraghic city, where foundations of 
the littler houses surround the huge tower.

Our guide held up a drawing of what the village might have 
looked like when people lived there. 
(He was a funny guide: He grew up in Russia and learned to speak 
English in Scotland, so he had the most amazing accent.)

Archeologists think they might have built the towers
so that they could signal from village to village. 
See the other Nuraghi tower (not yet dug up) in the distance?

Archeologists try to figure out what each building was used for.
Some were houses, but others seem to have been things like 
bakeries, laundries, or bath houses. 

I wonder what they put in these cubbyholes
3,500 years ago?

First,  you had to climb to the top of the tower
and then work your way down a tiny, tight, steep 
staircase to get to the bottom inside.
See the people down there?

 

There was a well at the bottom.
(That's a modern steel grate to keep people 
from falling in.)

 

 

There were rooms inside the tower, some
of which opened to the sky, while 
others were closed and dark.

Once a year, each village in Sardinia sends a group of people to a festival in a town called Sassari. They wear their village's traditional costumes and bring whatever the village makes best (cookies, bread, bells, wheat, lemons, whatever) to show off and share. They also bring dancers and horsemen to show off their skills in a parade and shows. The festival, called Cavalcata Sarda (Sardinia Cavalcade) started in the 1800s when some king came to visit and they wanted to show him all their best stuff. We were there for the 2025 Cavalcata.

Each village's "folk group" walked behind a banner like this one, 
announcing the village of Osilo.

This village is proud of its wheat.

This village is proud of its marzipan (almond candy).

These villages are proud of their cookies, fish, fishing nets?, baskets?, carpentry?, and bread.

Lots of parents are proud of their babies...

The kids seemed proud, too. They all seemed to be
having fun, or at least not to mind. 

My favorite was this little one, who discovered that if she clapped,
the crowd would start clapping, which would make her LAUGH,
and then she'd wait a few seconds and clap again, and the crowd 
would clap back and she'd LAUGH...over and over ...

 

 

 

I cannot begin to imagine the years of work that must have gone into making the traditional costumes!

 

Some villages sent music and dancers in the parade. Others had skits with people in weird and scary outfits. The good guys wore bells and carried ropes and lariats to capture the bad guys, who dressed up as wild animals or demons. In the video, notice how young some of the parade performers are.

 

 

 

 

OTHER INTERESTING THINGS 

In Palermo, they joke that this statue is showing 
how high the garbage gets before the city picks it up. 
Actually, I thought it was a very clean city. 
The statue stands in the Piazza Bologni, or "Baloney Plaza."

 

 

 

The first night we were in Syracuse, this really noisy mob
marched into the plaza, chanting and singing and shouting and
setting off bright torches that burned in different colors. 
I took this photo from our hotel balcony. 
We were a little scared, but the next morning learned
that the local soccer team had won a championship.

 

European Catholics like to take statues of their
cities' saints (this is Saint Rosalia) and parade them 
in the streets a couple times each year. This one
was still on her wheels, outside the cathedral in Palermo

Another odd Catholic practice: They keep the bones of 
dead saints on display in some of their churches.

 

...and not just the bones. Sometimes the whole body.
This bishop died in the 1940s. 
I don't know how they do this.

 

Have you seen the movie Pinocchio? Do you remember that it's set in Italy? Well, it turns out that puppets really are a big tradition in Sicily.  We visited a puppet museum and a puppet workshop, and we saw a very fancy puppet show. The puppets are about 3-4 feet tall. 

 

 

One thing I didn't like was how much American culture we saw and heard. 
Street musicians were usually playing American songs, and kids were
dressed in a lot of American things. This boy was in line with us to visit 
the Palatine Chapel--his jacket, hat, and backpack were all American superheroes.

 

One big difference between the cities we visited and cities in America was the reliance on walking. The old parts of the cities were built when most people didn't even have horses, never mind cars. So the old streets are not very wide. They didn't tear the buildings down to make the streets larger when they got motorized vehicles; they just got motorcycles and really small cars. Lots of people still live on streets like this, and lots of people still mainly walk everywhere.

In Syracuse, on Ortygia Island

Here's how much they don't mind walking: 
See that castle on the top of this hill in Bosa (Sardinia)?
It's a popular spot, but you HAVE to walk; 
there's no road that goes up there.

Here's the walkway up to the castle. I counted: it was 400 steps.

The streets were really hard, and I did not take 
the right shoes with me. I got 
horrible blisters on my feet. This street is in Rome.

We saw lots of paintings, both new and very old. 
This was one of the oldest we saw; it was painted on the wall of a chapel about 800 years ago.
A lot of the painting has fallen off but you can still see that it was a painting of the Last Supper,
with 12 disciples sitting at a table eating. See the tablecloth and the food? 
Now look just at the bottom of the tablecloth and notice: all the disciples' little feet are sticking out. 
Isn't that cute? This is in the chapel at the Castle of Bosa, in Sardinia.

I loved the wildflowers growing everywhere!
These are in the middle of Rome, a big city, and they are growing out 
of ancient ruins which are also everywhere in Rome,
which makes sense because it's been a city at that spot for more than 3,500 years.

These prickly pear cactus are not native to Sicily and Sardinia.
They are from Mexico, but the Italians like them and let them grow all over.