Original subtitles

It's a dancing squeeze.

A rose-colored Mediterranean dawn has been announcing the beginning of day on

this island for thousands of years.

But those who have witnessed the sun ascending have not always been Italian

or even truly Sicilian.

Almost from the birth of civilization, voyagers from seafaring lands, many with

conquest in mind, have found the jewel that is Sicily an irresistible prize.

Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Iberians, even Central

Europeans were each in their turn conquerors and rulers of Sicily. So her

culture is like an enticing antipasto, a delicious blend of superb ingredients.

Whatever powerful and mysterious forces raised this volcanic isle above the sea,

they surely endowed Sicily with a uniquely stark and dramatic beauty.

Yes, this is part of Italy, but the island's unique past also makes Sicilia

very much a land unto itself.

Its language and even its music reflect the island's varied cultural heritage.

Access to the island is frequently by sea, through the ancient port of Messina

at the northeast tip of the island, just five kilometers from the mainland of

Italy.

Ships have entered this very port for almost 3,000 years.

Now, a golden Madonna offers its benediction to those who both enter and

depart.

The town was originally given the name Zankle or Sickle by Greek colonists in

the 8th century BC because of the remarkable curvature of its harbor.

As a great trading center, Messina became a cultural crossroads as well.

Artifacts and ideas from the entire world were freely exchanged here.

Unfortunately, it is now hard to find very much that reflects Messina's

ancient glory.

For like most cities on Sicily's east coast, it was decimated by earthquakes

on more than one occasion.

The last time, in 1908, 90% of the town was destroyed.

There were more than 60,000 casualties.

Life on Sicily has always been precarious.

As a result, Sicilians tend to be somewhat fatalistic and to leave the

future in the hands of God.

It is mainly from Messina that ships depart to take visitors to the

stunningly dramatic Aeolian Islands.

A volcanic archipelago of seven islands, the Aeolians are generally untamed

places that the Greeks named after Aeolus.

the unpredictable and tempestuous god of the winds.

Vulcan was the Roman god of fire, who released molten earth from his foundry

far below the earth's crust.

These days, the crater on Vulcano appears dormant, but Don't be deceived,

it rumbles and erupts when least expected, spewing fiery boulders high in

the air.

This island, with its coastline of steep rocky crags, emerges abruptly from the

sea, making Stromboli the least welcoming and perhaps the most

impressive of all the Aeolians.

The square white houses of San Vincenzo stand at the foot of mighty Stromboli.

When she does erupt, the lava flows down to the sea just to the west of town.

lipari is the largest and most densely populated of the islands

The nearest port on the return to Sicily, less than an hour from Vulcano,

is ancient Milazzo, whose long jetty points like a finger directly out at the

Aeolians and has for over 2,000 years.

Milazzo's strategic position meant that it was fought over many times and

inhabited by various peoples.

The main fortification, which overlooks both sides of the Long Cape, was begun

by Arabs in the 10th century on what had been a Greek acropolis.

In typical Sicilian manner, the Spanish added to the fortress centuries later.

foreign foreign

One of the most modern developments on this ancient island is a system of

highways or autostradas that makes travel to cities throughout Sicily swift

and easy.

Motoring to Cefalu allows us to follow the rocky Turanian coastline westward.

Once a small fishing village of Greek origin at the base of an immense

limestone promontory, the medieval old town is an intriguing labyrinth of

winding streets with crooked and narrow passageways.

The heights of La Roca which sits like a throne high above cefalou offers a

panorama of the long tyrrhenian coast-line

a paradiso for

vacationers

Along the coast, halfway between Cefalu and Palermo, is Termini Immerse, famous

since antiquity for its therapeutic hot springs.

Phoenicians founded Sicily's largest city in the 7th century BC and called it

Giz, which means flower, because it lies at the foot of a fertile inland plain.

The Romans called it Panoramus, or the large port.

But the Golden Age really began under the Arabs, who called the city Balharm,

which in time became Palharm, or Palermo.

the norman french ruled palermo in the thirteenth century from this ancient

fortress they were so despised by the people that their inability to pronounce

sicilian properly earned them the name tartaglioni or stutterers eventually

a revolt against the french spread throughout sicily frenchmen unable to

pronounce the word cicero correctly were put to death the old norman palace is

presently the site of the sicilian parliament one of the oldest in history

the

city's imposing cathedral has stood on this spot for nine hundred years other

of the city's many churches may have more impressive religious artifacts but

this is where most palermo catholics come to worship their santuzza santa the

teatro

massimo on the aptly named piazza giuseppi verdi is one of the largest and

most acoustically perfect opera houses in Europe.

The various quarters of the city grew under different cultural influences.

In the Quattro Conti district, the specialty is still marzipan pastry, a

delicacy which has an Arabic origin.

And in the Calza district, it is common to find a street vendor selling

babalucci, tiny snails, marinated in olive oil, garlic and pepper.

santa rosalia is palermo's patron saint it is believed that in sixteen twenty

four her bones were found in a cave near this peak monte pellegrino which became

her sanctuary this is also a marvelous place from which to see the entire

city and its world-renowned port this ancient port from which ships and

sailors have always sailed

and to which ships and sailors and now tourists have always hoped they could

return.

Sicilians like to say that after God created the earth, he shed tears of joy.

And Sicilia is simply one of God's tears.

The landscape of the western part of the island is far less stark than the

mountainous and volcanic regions to the east.

Here, The hills are gentle, the valleys fertile, good grazing and wine country.

This is Sicily at her sweetest.

When a Sicilian farmer sees stones, he sees both a back-breaking labor and the

chance to build something permanent.

In his rock-strewn fields he will create a wall and make it beautiful as well as

practical. It has been thus for untold centuries.

Even in their most fanciful mythologies, the ancient Greeks could never have

envisioned anything like this rising out of the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Isola della Femmine, Island of the Women, is the name of both this tiny

island and the mainland beyond.

The island is kept in its natural state as a wildlife preserve.

one legend has it that thirteen women accused of infidelity were put out to

sea as punishment they landed here years later when they were exonerated they

refused to leave they had turned the isola della femine into a paradise

The ancient port city of Tropani, on the northwestern point of the triangular

island, shares the same rich and diverse history, Greek, Roman, North African,

Spanish, as most other Sicilian cities.

It is said that Demeter, the earth goddess of the Greeks, dropped her

scythe here and created the sheltering reef that protects Trapani Harbor.

The Lazaretto was a reception center for the diseased poor, especially lepers, a

colony of which was established near Trapani.

But Trapani has long been known as the city of windmills, not because any

milling of grain was done here, but because the windmills pumped water out

of Trapani's world-famous salt flats.

Now electric pumps extract the sea water.

The salt is left to dry in the sun and the result is the most savory salt in

the world.

Fishing fleets fill every cove along the western coastline.

The prize most often sought is the Mediterranean tuna.

Founded by Phoenician adventurers,

The name of the city actually derives from Arabic, Marsa el Ali, Port of Ali.

In fact, Marsala today, with a large Tunisian minority, still retains its

strong North African flavor.

It was to this harbor in 1860 the Garibaldi and 1,000 red-shirted

volunteers arrived to begin their mission of liberating Sicily from

foreign rule.

By the time they reached Messina on the opposite coast, their numbers had

swelled to over 20,000, and Sicily was free.

Watropany is to sea salt.

Marsala is to sweet dessert and cooking wine.

To be designated a true Marsala, the grapes used must have a high sugar

content and be grown, tended, and bottled in state-supervised vineyards.

Dedicated to Hera.

This Greek temple was rebuilt from its own ruins in 1957.

It was destroyed by the Carthaginian general Hannibal, who was promised a

huge sum from the townspeople to spare their sacred temples.

After he received the payment, Hannibal destroyed the temples and then proceeded

to slaughter the townspeople.

This was the site of a miracle in July 1831, for it was then that an offshore

island suddenly emerged from the sea.

It was christened Ferdinandia in honor of King Ferdinand of Spain.

And then, after five months, as suddenly and mysteriously as it had appeared,

Ferdinandia was gone.

The townsfolk of Shiaka have made sure to check the horizon daily ever since.

the climate of the southern or mediterranean coast of sicily can be

torrid in summer coming as it does on the hot prevailing winds the shiroko

from the sahara

But inland, in the small agricultural towns of Mediterranean Sicily, life goes

on pretty much as it always has.

Here, life takes its value from the significance of an annual saint's feast

day or festa.

foreign is

and there is the silk,

the silver and the gold and you make the mouth

of an angel with a golden cedar and you

put the yard in order

to cook so many days

Agrigento? The largest city on the southern coast is the birthplace of the

famed Greek mystic Empedocles.

It was he who first insisted that the heart was the basis of life. He who

taught that all matter is composed of earth, air, fire, and water.

And he who finally threw himself into the crater at Mount Etna and told his

disciples he had been summoned by the gods.

The cathedral at Agrigento today stands high above the city,

just as sacred temples did in Empedocles' day.

In 1934, the Sicilian Luigi Pirandello, poet, novelist, dramatist,

was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

This house, on the outskirts of Agrigento, was his birthplace.

About his Sicily home he wrote, A solitary house, set in my native

countryside, Up here on this plateau, above the azure sea.

I will always see my home from afar.

The author's ashes are buried beneath the withered, lightning-scarred but

still noble Pirandello pine.

the sicilian earth is restless even in the fertile central plains where the

earth is most stable it lies in sharp folds not certain whether it is really

land or a breaking wave

sicilian ingenuity and brilliant engineering characteristics as old as

the roman empire have mastered the terrain with breath-taking constructions

the central plateau is the bread-basket of sicily where hard-working farm

families raise much of the island's essentials the cattle wheat corn

and hay

Rare and precious as water is on the island, in the high plateaus there is

just enough water for irrigation in the parched summer months.

Called the Belvedere of Sicily, Erna, located almost in the geographical

center of the island, sits on a high plateau 1,000 meters above sea level.

Even though her position seems to make it an impregnable fortress, Enna has

also been occupied by foreign armies many times.

Above the altar in the Gothic Duomo di Enna is a painting called Christ of the

three faces, because Christ's expression appears to change depending on the

position of the viewer.

Here is the ancient city's chief fortification.

So old it cannot be dated precisely.

Only six of its original towers remain.

Inland, Sicily abounds with orange and lemon groves. One of the pleasures of

the island's warm breezes is their delightful aroma.

The air on Sicily is always perfumed citrus.

Entering this hilltop cathedral is, as always, an act of faith.

Here, it can be a fairly strenuous workout as well.

Passage through the narrow valleys of Monte Iblie takes us inevitably to the

sea, but to a different sea this time, the Ionian on Sicily's east coast.

At its height, in the 5th century BC, Syracuse, or Syracusa, founded by Greeks

from Corinth, grew to a population of 300,000.

For centuries thereafter, populous Syracuse ruled all of Sicily. She became

so powerful, in fact, that a long and bitter war broke out between Sicily and

Athens itself.

The city is actually composed of an island, the Old Quarter, now connected

to the mainland by permanent bridges.

The city prided itself on its poetic and intellectual tradition.

The greatest names from Greek antiquity were drawn here.

Plato and Pythagoras spent years in Syracuse, as did the dramatist Aeschylus

and the lyric poet Pindar.

Syracuse basks in its glorious past.

Archimedes was born here.

On these very streets, he ran shouting, Eureka!

after filling his bathtub to the brim, sitting in it, and discovering the law

of displacement.

But Syracuse is just as proud of being a thoroughly modern city, with a

contemporary sense of style.

even sicily's deep-rooted catholicism has in this city a contemporary

expression rare anywhere else on the island

From this port, it is only a short trip eastward across the Ionian Sea to the

Italian mainland, or to venture further north along the coastline toward

Catania.

The vast plain of Catania, where three rivers converge, lies at the foot of

Mount Etna.

The active volcano's lava, which has destroyed cities and populations,

ironically also enriches the soil.

The plain of Catania is among the richest farmland in Sicily.

This busy port, and Sicily's second largest city after Palermo, is also one

of the most blistering places on the island.

Summer temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees.

One might wonder why this fortress built to protect the harbor isn't on the

harbor. Well, it was on the harbor when it was built in the 17th century.

but a great lava flow from etna pushed the sea back hundreds of yards

an earthquake in the same century all but

destroyed the city as a reminder of etna's power and as a talisman lava

stones decorate many doorways and monuments in catania

catania was almost

completely rebuilt

which is why the city is laid out as a modern city in a grid with wide

boulevards and spacious parks.

On almost every corner, modern life accommodates antiquity in very

surprising ways.

the duomo is dedicated to st agatha patron saint of catania in two hundred

fifty one a d she met her death by fire at the hands of the romans catanians

invoke her spirit to protect them from the fiery and arbitrary power of etna

We approach ancient Naxos, the oldest Greek colony in Sicily, as Theocles did

28 centuries ago.

Imagine that placid morning, which may have been very much like this day.

As rocky Taramina rises out of the Ionian Sea, she resembles many other

quiet, sloping coastal towns, and this was indeed the case years ago.

But in recent years, Taormina has lost her tranquility.

She has been discovered by the world.

many wealthy foreigners especially the british and germans have built villas

here taormina arte the international summer festival of music drama dance and

film has become world famous of all sicilian towns taormina is the one most

often described as chic

built

originally here by greeks and enlarged by the Romans, this scenic amphitheater

is the site of many arts festival performances.

From the highest seats in the theater, Mount Etna can be seen towering in the

western sky.

The volcano and the people who live beneath it have always been antagonists.

Yet, in some strange way, they are lovers as well, locked

eternally in an embrace of hope and despair.

of life and death.

Sicilians look to the enigmatic mountain in awe and wonder, knowing, as did

Greek and Roman, Spaniard and Arab, that it embodies mysterious forces far

more powerful than humans can ever comprehend.

Such mysterious power

makes Sicilians humble.

It also makes them proud.