For some reason, I like to compare cities to beautiful female figures: Turin, which I know very well, is an elegant and haughty princess with a knack for the occult. Venice is coquette, colorful and well aware of her unequalled beauty and Rome, well, Rome is the Empress: with dark-silk hair and covered in gold, she has no age and leaves us all besotted and in love.  

 And then, there is Palermo. Even we Italians forget about Palermo, sometimes, and only think of her when news about organised criminality get on the front page, or after yet another emotional, sorrowful commemoration of the heroic men and women who lost their lives fighting it.Of course, we have Palermo in mind when reading about Sicilian food, and some of us may even know something about its architecture, but the truth is we Italians are a bit unfair to her, constantly underestimating her, thinking of other cities when imagining the perfect icon of Italian artistic and cultural excellence.