I am in Polizzi Generosa for a short time only, staying in the first floor apartment of The Sicilian House, The Sant’ Orsola, in Palazzo Notar Nicchi. And, I am thinking about how I came to know about Polizzi.
The late spring air is still cool at night, the days are warm and the fields and soaring mountains surrounding Polizzi are green after the winter rains.
It is always nice to be back.
It will be twelve years in September since my husband, my youngest daughter and I first pulled up in Polizzi’s Piazza Carpinello, with a list of six or so villages in search of a house in Sicily.
We had never been to Polizzi.
'The Stone Boudoir'
After reading American Sicilian writer Theresa Maggio’s evocative book, The Stone Boudoir: In search of the hidden villages of Sicily; first published in 2002 I became intrigued with Polizzi Generosa.
Before The Stone Boudoir I had not heard of Polizzi.
In 2003 I was determined to see it, the secret mountain village Theresa Maggio described as ‘lofty’ with air like ‘chilled champagne’ where 'it feels as though you leave the physical world behind’ and enter a ‘more ethereal world’.
In Polizzi now
I am writing this at the kitchen table as dawn breaks over ‘lofty’ Polizzi. The full moon hangs above the rooftop of the small 14th century Church of Sant’ Orsola at the back of Palazzo Notar Nicchi. And, swallows dip and call out as the sky becomes a pale blue.
It feels otherworldly.
The evening before was cool and the streets ‘narrow and nubby with cobblestones the color of old nickels’ were quiet in the late evening.
The Polizzi chapters
In the last couple of days I have enjoyed re visiting Theresa Maggio’s The Stone Boudoir and in particular the chapters which tell of Polizzi’s history and charms –the water fountains, the precious library, the stones, the narrow arched streets, the ‘warm orange light’ of the street lamps and the generosity of the people.
And the pages recount, with vigour and simplicity, Polizzi’s history: the Arab defeat of the occupying Byzantine forces in a field near Polizzi in 882, and the colonising, in the 3rd century BC by a group of Greeks who ‘settled in Polizzi and made roof tiles and fine vases from the abundant clay deposits still mined today.'
Those rose coloured ‘fat clay’ deposits are no longer mined.
However, the tradition of pottery making continues in Polizzi. I passed master potter, Giovanni D’ Angelo’s shop on Wednesday as I walked the main street on my way to the weekly market. And a couple of his Michelangelo inspired Torsonudo stools just inside the shop’s front door, caught my eye.
And, later on when I stopped to say hello to Signora Vinci, the owner of a café and pastry shop on the main corso, Via Garibaldi, I was offered a coffee.
The word Generosa, bestowed on Polizzi by Frederick II (the king of Sicily and stupor mundi) in 1234 when the town so generously gave him ‘more arms, men, horses and grain than did Palermo the seat of his empire’, still captures the spirit of the village.
Other intriguing villages
Throughout the book Theresa Maggio transports the reader with a passionate ease as she discovers some of Sicily's hidden stone villages and the emotive traditions of her grandparents' island where festivals, days long, still fill the streets.
She takes the reader to other charming towns with enticing names like Linguaglossa, Geraci Siculo, Zafferana Etnea and Castiglione di Sicilia.
It is an engaging read for anyone who is interested in Sicily and wants to discover intriguing villages that are, as Theresa Maggio says, ‘the island’s hidden treasure and the secret spring of Sicilian endurance'.
It is what brought me to Polizzi Generosa; a Sicilian 'stone boudoir'.
Salve,
Suzanne
Edited 7/6/2015
