Time, Einstein, Dali, Relativity, Mussolini, and More: Letter from Italy by Christopher Thornton

We know the story all too well. It has been repeated so often that it has become a leitmotif of human history: a conquering army overcomes a rival, and in the aftermath, a once-thriving civilization is reduced to rubble and ashes. A defeated population is slaughtered or enslaved, its cities are looted, its temples and monuments razed. A page is torn from the human story to be pieced back together by those who follow.

When the Macedonian Alexander the Great seized Persepolis in 330 B.C., the capital of the Persian Empire was torched and looted in a matter of days. Historians claim that it took a team of over 3,000 camels, mules, and other pack animals to carry off all the loot, which included 2,500 tons of gold and silver. They also agree that it was largely retaliation for the Persians’ burning of Athens 150 years earlier, so a callous scorekeeper might write off the mayhem as a tit-for-tat.

After the Ottoman sultan Mehmet I conquered the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 1453, his troops were allowed to wreak havoc on the city for three days, in keeping with the custom of the time. Many of the inhabitants were butchered, half of the houses were destroyed, and many churches were stripped of their valuables. The Hagia Sophia became a mosque and the city itself was given a new name: Istanbul, or “full of Islam.”

Less than a century later, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Aztec ruler Montezuma confronted the advancing armies of Hernando Cortez. Aided by the Tlaxcalans, one of Montezuma’s rivals, Cortes laid waste to one Aztec city after another until he had Montezuma cornered in the city of Tenochtitlan. After an eight-month siege, Tenochtitlan surrendered. Cortes’ forces ravaged the city and swapped the statues of the Aztec gods for Christian icons.

But it didn’t always have to be that way, and it always wasn’t. For over 200 years, Sicily prospered under Arab rule. It was governed by a spirit of tolerance and acceptance of the island’s many faiths and ethnicities—Muslims, Christians, Jews, Saracens from North Africa, Italian tribesmen. It became a fantastically wealthy trading center known for its spirit of decadence and indulgence. But the Arabs had also turned the island’s patchwork of villages into well-ordered towns and cities, introduced an irrigation system that boosted agricultural production, and established local markets to stimulate intra-island trade. Then, the French Normans, returning from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, landed on Siciliy’s western coast in 1061, led by Robert Guiscard and Roger Bosso, Robert’s younger brother.

From a conqueror’s point of view, Robert and Roger couldn’t have arrived at a more opportune time. Despite its prosperity, discontent on the island was rife, with regional warlords itching for a rebellion against the rulers in Palermo. The brothers exploited the fray, making deals with leaders of the local fiefs that involved swapping control of land for military support. Bit by bit, Robert and Roger gained control of Sicily more and more so that by 1072, they were able to seize the capital, Palermo itself.

Here is where the story takes an unexpected turn. In the wake of the conquest, none of Sicily’s mosques were burned. Christian icons never replaced the Islamic symbols of daily life. The Arabic language was not banned. None of the non-Christian population fell to the Crusaders’ swords. Instead, the brothers recognized the achievements of the longtime Arab rulers and the advanced knowledge they had brought to the island and chose to build on them. Eventually, both Robert and Roger passed into history. Roger’s son Simon enjoyed a brief reign as the island’s ruler, but control of Sicily was then handed to Roger II, and under his reign, the island reached a level of wealth, power, and influence it hadn’t seen in the near thousand years since.

Roger II has often been described as a “product of the Mediterranean.”  His character and consciousness were shaped by the many influences of the region. He was born in multicultural, multi-religious Calabria in 1095, where mosques stood casually alongside churches. His early teachers were Greek and Muslim scholars. He was fond of discussing medicine, philosophy, and mathematics, and he learned Arabic early in life and spoke it fluently. In a nod to Sicily’s Arab legacy, his regal cloak carried the date of his regency in the Islamic year 528.

Once Roger II became the ruler of Sicily, he chose not to upset its delicate applecart but to continue driving it forward. Almost a thousand years before the term “multicultural” had become the buzzword of the modern era, Roger II put it into practice in the upper echelon of his government. Muslim calligraphers recorded state business in beautifully cursive Arabic. Local bishops represented the churches of England, France, and Italy. French became the official language of the court, but royal decrees were written in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, depending on the community most affected by their content. His commander-in-chief was George of Antioch, a Syrian Christian whose first language was Greek. Under George, the Sicilian fleet came to rule the Mediterranean. Other notables included the Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi and Nilus Doxopatrius, a historian of Greek ancestry. Rather than impose a common code of justice, under Roger, the people faced tribunals that applied the laws of their various religions. His approach to governance had a continent-wide payoff: many of the textbooks used in the fledgling universities that had begun to appear all over Europe were translations of scholarly documents that had been compiled in Sicily. 

The cultural mélange of the island was evident in every aspect of daily life. Coins were inscribed with the Islamic year. Arabic-speaking Christians often sported Muslim attire. The blend of talents and ideas brought the island a level of development that rivaled nearby Andalusia. Before the arrival of the Normans, the Arabs had brought cotton, sugar cane, citrus fruits, and dates to Sicily, and Roger refined these innovations, developing profitable industries in the production and export of textiles, sugar, wheat, cheese, and following successful raids on the Byzantine Empire, the fabric that had become the craze of the Mediterranean—silk. 

It can’t be denied that geography helped. Sicily’s location in the center of the Mediterranean made it a convenient crossroads for the passage of goods and ideas, and Roger turned away no one who could contribute to the island’s prosperity. On his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca, the Spanish-Muslim geographer Ibn Jubeir wrote:

[Palermo] is endowed with two gifts, splendor and wealth. It contains all the real and imagined beauty that anyone could wish for. Splendor and grace adorn the piazzas and the countryside. The streets and the highways are wide, and the eye is dazzled by the beauty . . . It is a city full of marvels, with buildings similar to those of Cordoba . . . A permanent stream of water from springs runs through the city. There are so many mosques they are impossible to count. Most of them also serve as schools. The eye is dazzled by all this brilliance.

The multicultural character of the island is most clearly represented in a funerary stone for a woman known only as Anna, the mother of a priest who went by the name of Grisandus. The inscription is written in Arabic, Latin, Greek, and a fusion of Hebrew and Arabic called Judeo-Arabic, which was designed for Sicily’s Sephardic Jews. The date of death is also given special treatment. It was recorded in agreement with the Byzantine, Gregorian, and Islamic calendars.

By the time of his death, Roger had succeeded in uniting all the Norman conquests in Italy into one kingdom with a strong centralized government. Regrettably, like so many good things in life, it was not to last. By 1170, anti-Muslim pogroms began to drive many of the Muslims off the island. Around the year 1200, a “Latinization” effort began to flatten the island’s multicultural character. A wave of conversions made Catholicism the dominant religion. By the middle of the century, Islam had all but disappeared from Sicily.

That could have been the end of the story of Sicily or at least the island’s cultural kaleidoscope, but it wasn’t—because the Normans were builders, and Roger II, particularly, took a fancy to the aesthetic sensibilities of not only the Arab rulers he supplanted but his archrivals, the Byzantines centered in Constantinople. Almost a thousand years later, the edifices the Normans left behind stand as monuments to the principle of fusion. Today, it is a buzzword associated with faddish cuisine, but in historical terms, it means recognizing rather than erasing the aesthetic values of those who had gone before. In architectural terms, it sets Sicily apart from the rest of Italy and even defines the term Sicilian.

In 1131, a year after Roger II was crowned the island’s king, his man of the sea, George of Antioch, threw up the Ponte dell’Ammiraglio, or Admiral’s Bridge, over the Oreto River, east of Palermo’s center. Legend has it that Archangel Michael appeared before Roger at the site and assisted in his conquest of the island. Whatever its origins, the bridge’s austere lines mark it as Norman, though the same geometric simplicity offers a nod to Arab design. 

A few years later, Roger reclaimed the San Giovanni degli Eremiti, or St. John of the Hermits, a sixth-century church that had later been turned into a mosque. With magnanimity in victory, Roger paid due diligence to the island’s former rulers, rebuilding the entire complex with echoes of Arab design, particularly in the exterior garden, a common feature of Islamic architecture.

Of course, there is more. In the center of Palermo, the Church of San Cataldo, on the Piazza Bellini, rose from the foundation of a former church—or mosque, depending on the time period—but both Arab and Byzantine influence is clear. The overall structure is plain to the point of stark (Norman), but geometric designs (Arab) and red domes (Byzantine) defer to influences from the East and add a touch of panache.

Looming over St. John of the Hermits is the massive Palazzo dei Normanni, which served as the Norman kings’ command center after they ousted the Arab rulers. It was built on the site of an Arab fortress, but the many gardens that connect the mishmash of buildings and arcades were the creation of Arab horticulturists to preserve a central feature that came in handy in the searing Sicilian summers. Just down the street, the hulking Cathedral of Palermo displays no Islamic influence, and naturally so, but Roger II recruited artisans from Constantinople to create the decorative mosaics splashed across its interior.

It is a bit ironic that one of the most prominent examples of Arab-Norman fusion lies far outside Palermo. It is the cathedral of Monreale, perched at the high point in the town of the same name, and the only reason to visit. But the trip is an essential part of the journey, for the bus from the Piazza Palatina traverses the green and undulating Sicilian countryside as tinier villages pass and the road rises toward the town. The final stop avoids the small plaza in the front of the church. It is on Monreale’s main street, a few hundred meters from the massive stone hulk, which is a good thing. It means a final trek of several hundred meters to cover the rest of the distance, and satisfaction delayed is satisfaction better satisfied.

Monreale would not be Monreale, and Monreale would not be Sicilian if it weren’t for a legend about the cathedral’s origins. This one claims that William II was out hunting near Monreale when he happened to doze off under a tree. As he dreamt, the Virgin Mary instructed him to build a church on the site. Awakened, William found enough gold beneath the tree to fund Monreale’s construction.

History is every myth’s spoiler, and Monreale would also not be Sicilian were it not for a more factual account. In that telling, when the Arabs seized the island in 831, the bishop of Palermo was driven from the city. Choosing to stay close to home, he found shelter in a tiny village that offered a commanding view of his former town. There, he built a small church to keep the flame of the Christian faith burning, and it became the foundation of the cathedral once the Normans returned and returned Sicily to Christian rule.

Like so much Norman architecture, Monreale’s exterior is stark and severe, as if hiding the many layers of beauty within. There, Arab-inspired geometric patterns swirl across the marble floor, and the entire plan is a combination of Eastern and Western designs. Looming above are biblical stories recreated in mosaics that were the work of Venetian (read, Byzantine) craftsmen. The disorientation continues in the adjoining cloisters. The courtyard is lined with 108 pairs of columns decorated in mosaic patterns. Like snowflakes, no two are the same, and each is crowned with a capital in classical floral design. Visitors wander around the cathedral in hushed, awed, or simply confused silence. Is this East or West? A European church or a Damascene mansion? Neither, and both. Instead of sending a Christian or Islamic message, what the cathedral stands for is clear—that true beauty is not the sole product of any people or part of the world but the mingling of many. Each had a hand in the final creation and has earned a share of its effect.

By the time William I and William II, the heirs of Roger II, completed the Al Zisa Palace, the Normans had been thoroughly bitten by the Arab bug. Al Zisa—meaning the “wonderful” or “splendid”—was intended to serve as a hunting retreat for the Williams whenever they heard the call of the Sicilian countryside. Today, the site is almost due south of Palermo Central and well within the boundary of the city proper, so any aura of idyllic bliss is long gone. Traffic circles around the large park spread out in front of the palace. A long rectangular pool, lined with seasonal fountains, serves as a reminder of the Arab origin of the entire complex.

To step beyond the walls surrounding the palace is to leave behind the chaotic traffic of modern Palermo, the conservative Catholicism of the rest of Italy, and even the multicultural character of medieval Palermo. The Al Zisa is wholly, thoroughly, and unequivocally Eastern. Doorways topped with pointed arches divide the rooms. Decorative wall niches house oil lamps and ornamental vases. The walls are doubly thick to guard against the searing heat of summer and the damp chill of the Sicilian winter. Many of the ceilings are decorated with muqarnas, a feature of many Islamic buildings in which a ceiling is divided into carved geometric patterns that create a honeycomb effect.

But for any medieval Sicilian, the most valuable feature of Al Zisa would have been its air-conditioning system. To beat the summer heat, Al Zisa was designed to face northeast to allow the sea breezes to pass across a large pool laid out before the palace’s reception hall. There, a network of ducts and channels carried the fresher, cooler air to the upper levels. A good night’s sleep in a Sicilian summer became, quite literally, a delight of kings.

Arab, Greek, Roman, Norman, and Byzantine—Sicily dances over and defies categorization. The celebration of the mélange is arguably the Capella Palatina, the creation of Roger II as an addition to his Norman Palace. Tucked away on the second floor, visitors find their way to the entrance by keeping an eye out for discreetly placed directional signs. But once there, the chapel is presented as quintessentially Norman. The arches and doors echo North Africa. Inside, Italian artisans designed the floor, though the mosaics that fill the walls are classic Byzantine. Higher up, the wooden ceiling is carved in muqarnas surrounded with eight-pointed stars, another nod to Arab influence, while the inscriptions are written in Arabic, Greek, and Latin. But lest anyone forget, this is a Christian chapel; a massive mosaic of Jesus Christ, the Pantokrator, fills the dome.

Back in the fifth century B.C., a Sicilian cook who went by the name of Mithecus traveled to Greece, and when he returned, he wrote what is believed to be the world’s first cookbook. Little did he know that in the centuries to come, the island he left would become a culinary crossroads, where all the refined tastes of the Mediterranean would have a hand in creating one of the world’s most complex cuisines. On the western end of the island, the Greek immigrants would fancy dishes packed with pistachios, olives, and broad beans to complement the tried-and-true staples of fish and vegetables. Around Tripani, to the west, the North African Berbers favored recipes founded on couscous. After the opening of the New World, the Spanish would add corn, sweet peppers, and tomatoes to the ever-expanding stock of ingredients found in Sicilian cooking.

During their two centuries of rule, the Arabs played the role of head chef in the development of Sicilian cuisine, adding citrus fruits such as lemons, limes, and blood oranges, the durum wheat that became the prime ingredient in pasta, and almonds for marzipan desserts (credited to the nuns at the Convent of Eloise). And let us not forget sugar cane and vanilla, without which we wouldn’t have confetti—nutty, chewy almond clusters—fennel and pine nuts, raisins, dates, chickpeas, artichokes, and sesame seeds, cinnamon, saffron, and nutmeg. All were ferried to Sicily by the Saracens of North Africa.

Once the appetite for architecture is satisfied, there is no better way to savor Sicily’s multicultural flavor than to eat Sicilian cuisine.

Thin-crust pizza? Sicily’s crust is thick and often topped with spinach, anchovies, artichokes, and smoked scamorza. Risotto alla Milanese (arborio rice seasoned with saffron and grated parmesan)? A tough find beyond the Lombardy region. Vegetable lasagna?

“No, no lasagna. Lasagna is found mainly from the north,” a waiter patiently informed me one evening, and by “north” he meant the rest of Italy.

So, what is Sicilian cuisine? The best way to find out was to trek to Palermo’s Kalsa district, like the Vucciria, Ballaro, and Capo, a one-time Arab market where the pencil-thin main street is lined with stalls by day and restaurant terraces at night. From early morning till afternoon, the town folk pick through the freshest of fresh vegetables and fruits, stacks of cheeses (smoked pravola, saffron-flavored piacenteria, conestrata), spice bins filled with fennel and oregano, garlic and sea salt, basil, thyme, and red pepper, and piles of pasta in shapes and textures too many to count.

Then night falls, and the Kalsa—like the Vucciria, Ballaro, and Capo—becomes one of Palermo’s premier dining halls. The stall owners packed up; the restaurateurs took over. Catches of the day are spread on beds of ice in glass cases. All glisten under the glow of flickering fluorescent lights—seabass and salmon, filets of tuna, perhaps cod, halibut, and shrimp, the odd swordfish, seabream, and squid, and on a lucky day, a few squiggles of octopus. Red-and-white-checked tablecloths are spread over wobbly wooden tables, shielded by sun-faded awnings. Soon, the tablecloths are stained with olive oil and sprinkled with breadcrumbs, courtesy of the parade of guests. Palermo’s markets cater to the culinary connoisseur, not the impressionable.

No Sicilian meal would begin without an antipasto, so on the way, I pop into a corner kiosk for arancini, a kneaded ball of creamy risotto, breaded and deep-fried, and laced with tomatoes, vegetables, and diced meat. Deeper in the Kalsa, the tables have begun to fill, and the punters have hit the streets waving menus, but for attention, they can’t compete with the aromas that waft from the kitchens. If smells were sounds, the Kalsa would be a cacophony. There is the strong and the soothing, the playful and the piquant, the sharp and the sweet, but here in the Kalsa, all intertwine like the architectural mélange of the Capella Palatina.

At nine o’clock, dinner in the Kalsa becomes a game of musical chairs, with too few tables for too many diners. I grab one of the last, and my dinner begins with maccu, a thick soup chuck full of fava beans, onions, and tomatoes that is said to date from Roman times. For a hint of North African, I add a dash of fennel and a drizzle of olive oil. A crucial decision looms. For the next course, pasta con le sarde (spaghetti tossed with sardines, raisins, pine nuts, and saffron) or pasta alla Norma from Catania (penne mixed with tomatoes, eggplant, garlic, basil, and a sprinkle of salted ricotta)? It is a toss-up. I toss a coin. The winner: pasta alla Norma. It is washed down with a glass of Catarratto bianco (okay, two). Next comes pesce spada alla ghiotta (swordfish cooked with tomatoes, olives, and capers), and to finish, a slice of cassata Siciliana—sponge cake layered with ricotta and slathered with pistachio marzipan. But this is a Sicilian dinner, so I’m not truly finished until the finishing touch arrives: a splash of Vecchio Romana, the local brandy, smooth with a hint of fruit but not so sweet as to challenge the sponge cake.

It is late, and the waiters have begun to sweep the crumbs off the tables. Another moment of choice: I ask myself—which better represents the full flavor of multicultural Sicily, the church tours or my Kalsa feast? Another tossup. I toss another coin. It spins, twirls, gyrates in the air, then lands on its side, wobbles a moment, tips left, then right, but stays upright.