On Days Like These... (Sicily)

By Neil Matthews


‘On days like these, I wonder what became of you
Maybe today you’re singing songs with someone new...’




Piazza IX April

Sicily has had to learn many songs in its time.  The Greeks, the Romans, the Vandals, the Arabs, the Normans, the Hohenstaufens, the Angevins, the Spanish, the Bourbons: they all occupied the island at one time or another.  Now Sicily is part of Italy.  As the midday sun burns down on the chessboard pattern of Piazza IX April in Taormina on the east coast, the two guitarists sitting under one of the oleander trees give yet another rendition of ‘Volare’.  There are plenty of Englishmen (and women and children) walking past, or slumped in cafe seats, but it’s too hot for them or the dogs to get particularly mad.  The soundtrack changes to ‘New York, New York’, perhaps as an indirect tribute to those Sicilians and other Italians who sought a new life across the Atlantic.

After a break for a strawberry granita – a type of runny sorbet, very refreshing – it’s time to saunter down the Corso Umberto, Taormina’s main street.  The town sits on the side of a hill and little side streets and alleys offer plenty of opportunities to stray from the central path of retail therapy. Vicolo Stretto is the narrowest, requiring a sideways turn to gain access.  Curious crowds brandishing camera phones look on, as a model and photographer dart on and off the Corso for their latest assignment.  The model totters into a side street and lounges across the steps in her slinky black dress and steep heels.  She is long-haired, slim, young and attractive: the photographer is the opposite in every respect.  He has to be diplomatic; if the model decided to hurry off further down the side street, there’s no guarantee he could squeeze into the gap to follow her.

Back in the Corso Umberto, all retail life is here.  Designer clothes devoid of price labels include some more improbably high heeled shoes and fur coats from the new winter collection; one shop window even has a throne which must be the last word in chintz.  Antique wooden furniture spills out into the street, while paintings and knickknacks sit awaiting buyers.  Postcards of local views of the sea and of Mount Etna, fridge magnets, puppets of Saracen soldiers all abound.  Street traders take little jelly-like objects and throw them onto towels on the pavement where, with a splat, they roll up into balls with dots for eyes and a mouth.  It’s hard to avoid wondering if anybody ever buys any of this.  The street is a real and figurative shop window for Sicily: bright and cheerful, the shadows inside.
At the far end of Corso Umberto, past the road which leads to the ancient Greek theatre, is the BAM bar.  It claims to offer tea, on an island where coffee rules, except at hotel breakfast tables.  Coffee, granitas and brioches seem to be the most popular items with its customers. 

Strawberry granita

Yet, implausible as it may be, tea could have gained a place in the life of Sicily, if history had taken another path. This year is the 200th anniversary of a short-lived British constitution in Sicily, in the middle of a nine year period in which British troops occupied the island.  The island, with its strategic position in the middle of the Mediterranean and close to British-held Malta, saw almost 15,000 British troops arrive by mid-1806, aiming to keep sea lanes open and to act as a springboard for attacks on Napoleon’s southern flank.  A succession of British representatives took varying views on how to secure the island, and whether political rule was needed in addition to military occupation.  A new constitution complete with British-style bicameral parliament came into force in 1812, but it failed to be effective, not least due to its refusal to vote to raise taxes.  Eventually, as the war turned Britain’s way, the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, believed that possessing Malta and the Ionian Islands would be enough: keeping control of Sicily might alienate British allies such as Austria.  By the end of 1816 the British constitution had been abolished and Sicily returned to rule from Naples – until a certain Garibaldi arrived in 1860.

That wasn’t the end of English invasions: from then on, they usually came in the form of tourists.  As the 19th century wore on, a growing section of the newly prosperous middle classes – and a smaller proportion of working people – obtained the time and the money to start to travel abroad.  Following in the pioneering footsteps of Thomas Cook, a number of new travel agencies sprang up, with Italy and Sicily among the destinations they covered.  One of these was the Toynbee Travellers’ Club, a society set up within Toynbee Hall in London, whose object was ‘to provide education and the means of recreation and enjoyment for the people of the poorer districts of London and other great cities’.  By the late 1880s the Travellers’ Club was organising educational tours to the Continent, with reading lists and lectures held in advance. 

A logbook still survives of an autumn 1901 trip to Naples and Sicily for 29 members of the Club – 19 men and 10 women.  They departed on 2 Oct from Cannon Street in London, going to Ostend, Lucerne, Milan, Bologna, Rome, Naples and Sicily.  They would spend 13 days in Sicily. The cost was estimated at £20 including second class rail, first class steamer, accommodation, ‘plain’ breakfasts, lunch, attendance and tips – with wine extra.  (Around this time a skilled industrial worker in full employment could expect to earn over £200 per annum; an elementary school teacher could expect to earn around £150 per annum.) 
The unnamed female author of the logbook recorded that the steam ferry to Messina contained ‘Sicilian gentlemen in riding boots, Piedmontese soldiers, nuns, Toynbee travellers, and peasantry with fruit.  There was also on board one of the Nelson family, who still own an estate on the island [at Bronte].’  Local life was easy to observe: ‘The home life of the people is almost public as every crowded living room gives on to the main narrow street, all the doors are open and the people live on their thresholds, chatting, knitting, mending or preparing cooking with their swarthy little bambinos crawling and scrambling around their feet.’  Some of the party climbed Etna in time to see the sunrise: the logbook author noted dryly that ‘any man may climb Etna but only a fool does it twice’. 

The tour visited Palermo, Agrigento and Syracuse before starting on the return trip to the Italian mainland and eventually home - ‘Travelling teaches one that the necessities of life are few, and the luxuries many!’  The tour leader, Thomas Okey, received a number of gifts from the group including a revolving bookcase.

The Toynbee group, like many who have travelled before and since, saw themselves as ‘travellers’ possessing more taste and discernment than mere ‘tourists’.  However, though Thomas Cook’s business had started to open up Europe for more English travellers years before, true mass travel would not arrive until the jet age of the 1960s. Meanwhile, Taormina’s reputation grew, and not just for mainstream family tourism.  DH Lawrence stayed here for a few years and wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  Gay men found a refuge from the prevailing (dis)tastes of their era, as some of the saucier postcards on sale in the Corso can testify.

Even today, however, some things about Taormina are recognisable from its long history as a tourist resort.  Part of this is due to its location, accessible only by one of those hair-raising drives around hairpin bends which Italian coaches negotiate with inches to spare.  The locals may not live their whole lives in the streets any more, but they still preen and pose on the passeggiata (evening walk), pausing to wait for a newly-wed couple to emerge from one of the local churches.  Then there are the waves of day trippers (from cruise ships these days), stopping here for a brief glimpse of the town and some lunch before moving on to the next stop on their itinerary.  It’s far too hot to explore much beyond the town, so who is wiser - those who dip in and out of the town like the shallow end of a swimming pool, or those who wallow here for days without exploring further?

For, make no mistake, Taormina is a tourist trap: a bright, sunny, welcoming trap, to be sure, where you can wander from one cafe to the next, or take the cable car down to the coast or a bus to the archaeological park in Giardini Naxos. Or, if it’s the dog days of July and August, with temperatures in the nineties, you can find the shade and read one of Andrea Camilleri’s crime novels, set in south-western Sicily and featuring Inspector Montalbano.  The French used to say that Paris is not France; Taormina certainly isn’t more than a glimpse of Sicily. You’ll have to go further – to Palermo or Agrigento, or south to Syracuse – to find out more.  But as an introduction to this large, mysterious island, Taormina probably can’t be bettered.  And on days like this, as the heat bleaches everything around you, and you’re looking for a good place to eat pasta con sarde (pasta with sardines) or the best ice cream in town, then – to coin a phrase – I’ve got a great idea...

First published in VISA 105 (2012)