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Tokens are a common replacement for money in modern culture, whether we’re using them to access hotel parking garages or our kids are plunking them into arcade games. But did you know that tokens date back thousands of years? Dr. Antonino Crisà of Warwick University in England will showcase their use in Sicily during the reigns of ancient Greece an...

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Fra le tante piccole Fiat Cinquecento che, oggi, stanno invadendo Agrigento, ce n'è una dai colori e dai disegni tipicamente siciliani. E' di proprietà di Salvatore Brucculeri e Stefania Piccolo.“  Una macchina stupenda - siciliana doc - che fra sei mesi si trasferirà, assieme ai suoi proprietari, in America e parteciperà anche al Columbus day. L'a...

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The Mediterranean’s largest island is perhaps its least known among holidaymakers. Where the Balearics have enduring mass appeal and Sardinia has made a name for itself as the region’s glitzy go-to, Sicily is harder to define. Primarily visited by Italians, it remains a geographical and cultural crossroads, where centuries of invasions – including...

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When planning Italy vacations for next year, travel professionals’ eyes may be looking south, thanks to the selection of Matera as a European Capital of Culture for 2019 (along with Plovdiv, Bulgaria). It is the fourth Italian city so designated and the first since Genoa in 2004. The others were Bologna (2000) and Florence, the second-ever European...

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On a stormy night in October 1969, thieves broke into the Oratory of San Lorenzo, a small chapel in what was then Palermo’s dilapidated Kalsa quarter, and made off with one of the city’s artistic masterpieces: Caravaggio’s “Nativity” altarpiece. Investigators, both national and international, never gave up hunting for the lost painting, which is st...

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Michael Occhipinti supposes he could be Jewish, in some distant way. People tell him he looks like it. Others say he looks Arab, Egyptian or Italian, and he smiles every time: “All of the above,” he jokes. All he knows for sure is his family hails from Sicily, Italy, a Mediterranean melting pot of cultures, religions and dialects. His surname is ve...

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Wherever you’re going this summer—plane, train, automobile, beach, campsite, whatever—you’re going to need to bring some substantive travel snacks with you. And while pizza-flavored gas-station snacks are always a worthy choice, the smartest move you can make is a DIY Italian sub. Specifically, a muffaletta: New Orleans’ favorite deli sandwich is o...

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The pistachios grown in the village of Bronte, in Sicily, are known to Italians as “green gold.” And the moment you bite into an arancino at an old-school local bar, it’s easy to see why. There’s a crispy breadcrumb crust, then a béchamel pistachio pesto thickly woven around every rice grain. Pistachios are the star here — because they’re the best...

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The rain lightly pelted my window just as dawn was breaking on the Ionian Sea. I was lying snugly in my hotel bed in Syracuse, the venerable, ancient city on the eastern coast of Sicily. I dozed off for another hour or so before I was awakened once more by morning light through the balcony window. Does travel get any better than this? I thought. I...

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In the baroque town of  Caltagirone, Sicily, the main attraction is its ceramics industry. The name of the town derives from the Arabic word qal’at-al-ghiran, meaning Castle of Vases. There are ceramics everywhere you look: tile murals on buildings, as signs, and in the many ceramics shops just waiting for a savvy voyager to select a few special pi...

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