Gangi, which straddles the charming Madonie Mountains, is the latest Sicilian village to make the coveted list: The Most Beautiful Villages in Italy - I Borghi piu Belli d’Italia.

And during my long stay in Sicily this year I spent some quiet hours in the lovely Gangi on a late spring afternoon; I had travelled to Gangi from Polizzi Generosa stopping in Petralia Soprana for lunch. (The stone villages of the Madonie Mountains are only short distances from each other).

As I write this I am thinking of the arrival of the glorious crisp days of late autumn and early winter in Polizzi Generosa; spring gardening on a Sicilian terrazzo and our first guests of spring (in May this year), at Palazzo Notar Nicchi.

After the cold of the winter months, when the mountains surrounding Polizzi Generosa are green from the melting snow and spring has arrived The Sicilian House loves to replant the terrazzo on the top floor of Palazzo Notar Nicchi.

There is a cavernous, up lighted wine cellar in the basement of Palazzo Notar Nicchi  - The Sicilian House, which is slowly being filled with some really good Sicilian wines for guests.

Once a cisterna (almost 1000 years old) the deep cool cellar, the creation of the lovely artistic Sicilian architect Claudia Buccellato, is unique.

When staying in Polizzi I like to slip down the mountain road, the SS120 and take the autostrada to Palermo to wander the streets of the capital; discovering and rediscovering.

And when I stop the night in Palermo I sometimes stay in a hotel by the sea: Hotel Villa Igiea; to gaze out to the Tyrrhenian to turn my back, for a bit, on one of my favourite Italian cities and to revisit one of Palermo’s most beautiful Liberty style (Art Nouveau) rooms.