Palermo city

 

 In his famous "Viaggio in Italia", wrote Goethe :
“Italien ohne Sizilien macht gar kein Bild in der Seele: hier ist erst der Schlüssel zu allem“
(Italy without Sicily leaves no image in spirit: here, only here, is the key to everything).
The Sicilian journey begins with the landing in Palermo on 2 April 1787: the description of Monte Pellegrino, described the most beautiful of all the capes of the world, and the whole basin of Palermo strikes the deep emotional involvement of the German writer. In Palermo Goethe was able to spend the Easter and admire the beauty of a magical city for him, is struck by the colors and scents of the Villa Giulia edall'austerità most primitive of the Sanctuary of Santa Rosalia

In Sicily, Goethe worked on the project Nausicaa of the drama (still unfinished), under the influence of colors and lights that seemed precisely those of the young daughter of Alcinoo. Under the suggestion of a landscape that will leave a deep trace in his soul, the German writer, will remember years after the beloved Sicily in one of the most beautiful poems ever written:
“Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?”
(Know the land where lemons bloom?)

which emerges in an irrepressible sense of nostalgia for the land that, according to the German genius, was really the key to everything.
Palermo is a city of great wealth of art of four historical moments: the Arab-Norman architecture, the art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Baroque art of the seventeenth century, the decorative arts of the eighteenth century.
In the middle of the Mediterranean, the cradle of the oldest civilizations, the city has always been a crossroads of cultures between East and West. Strategic place of transit, calling privileged traffic, place of peoples of different races, languages and religions, Palermo has attracted visitors and foreign to his happy place and the beauty of the place. Even so, many have been, over the centuries, the rulers suffered.

Few cities, like Palermo, have preserved many traces of the culture of the conquerors: from the Romans to the Byzantines, the Arabs to the Normans, the Swabians to the French, the Austrians by the Spanish, everyone has left unmistakable traces of their stay, and almost always is evidence of extraordinary value, because the confluence of shapes and styles, from Northern Europe to Africa, the Middle Ages to the Baroque, has often resulted in very original artistic, architectural and decorative. And this is another peculiarity of Palermo: that, despite the mix of cultures, the city has retained its identity.