North to Florence After weeks in Sicily with three final nights in Palermo (I love this city), a short, late morning flight to Rome and a three hour drive up the Italian peninsula (passing names I haven’t seen for ages) I was to savour the unbeatable northern Italian charm of Florence for five nights.

From balconies... conversations drift Across the small piazza at the back of the house in Polizzi Generosa, one of my neighbours often stands against her first floor balcony rail and chats to a passerby. The voices travel across piazza Sant ‘Orsola and the narrow street, Via Notar Nicchi and then grow faint as people move on. I sometimes hear the voices from inside my house...it's nice.

Welcome to our first blog post for 2022. 

A few weeks ago I asked Maria Culletta - a house manager for The Sicilian House who lives in the historic centre of Polizzi Generosa - to name five things that she likes about Polizzi and its surrounds.

Along with the mountains… walking tracks, art treasures, local food, the people (I Polizzani) and their traditions all made her list along with a piazza named after a famous Renaissance family and a certain lovely street.

Fico d' India Fico d’India (Indian Fig) or simply the prickly pear grows wild in Sicily. Strong, tough, and straggling mountainsides and roadsides this classic Sicilian plant, bears lots of fruit (it is also commercially produced), is ‘indigenous to the American Southwest and Mexico’ and was planted in Sicily by the Spanish ‘at a time when Europeans still believed that the Western Hemisphere was part of India.’ (Vincent Schiavelli).