Palermo

in Italy's most sensuous town.

Palermo comes back to life in the fall - still hot enough to make the leap to the nearest beach and take a last bath, but perfectly suited for discovering this beautiful town. With 17 stylish and stylish flats in central Butera 28 (1), you can get great deals on all levels, from tiny but more than decent rooms for 75 (£67) per room up to 200 per person per nig.

Plaza Marina (3), with a large orchard of huge foci in the centre, is a quiet place to start a stroll before going westwards along Via Vittorio Emanuele and immersed in the sensuous overcrowding of the exceptional Vuccirìa square (4). Continuing along the street, Quattro Canti - a square intersection - is the meeting point of the four historical quarters of Palermo.

Drive southwards through Piazza Pretoria with its huge well dating from the sixteenth to Piazza Bellini, where two magnificent twelfth cent. square is located. Palermo's taxi services provide a round tour with a stopover in Palermo and Monreale for 120 euros.

The Palermo Guide: Sights and the best places to go to in Palermo | Travel

Palermo is less than 200 km from Tunis than anywhere else in Europe. Each neighboring country has eventually taken over Sicily, creating a fizzling mixture of Arab cuisine, Hispanic roads, Norman spires and italians' abandon. It is full of old buildings with façades full of sculptures and alleyways full of garbage.

A number of roads are still being built after they were bombarded by the Allied forces in the Second Worl. The first stop is the Palazzo de Normanni in Piazza Indipendenza, the climax of which is the Palatine Chapel, decorated with gold statues from the Bible. Intimer is the La Martorana in Piazza Bellini with tessellated statues above the Romanic arc.

However, the main attraction is outside the city: the Monreale Catholic Church, five kilometres from Palermo, has beautiful ceiling and wall decorations by mosaics of masters that have been taken all the way from Byzantium. Palermo's center is like a scenery - its roads, all barsoque façades, its inhabitants are open to community life.

In Piazza Ballarò, Via Sant'Agostino and Piazza San Domenico, there is a morning cafe. Nicoletta Polo, the charming Duchess of Lampedusa, organises a series of cooking and commercial events that begin at the loud Capo streets and end with a five-course dinner in her stylish palazzo.

She' s the daughter-in-law of the Italian bestseller The Leopard, who tells the tale of the changing aristocracy in Sicily. Fabrizio, the main figure of the novel, belonged to her house, and the writer was there. It doesn't get any more realistic for a foretaste of the past, but also of it.

A grass-roots campaign against the payment of mafias' protective funds or pizzos has been going on since the appalling murder of the Crusaders Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in 1992 (after whom Palermo International Airfield is named) - and now there is a no-mafia trip through the city. As part of the reunification of Italy (1861-71), Palermo opened the Teatro Massimo, the third biggest theatre in Europe.

Constructed like a giant Rome sanctuary, it towers above Piazza Verdi and the wandering crowd at sundown. You will find the answer to the complexity of Sicily in two stylish museum of fine arts. Contemporanea of the Sicilia Museum (6 , 6, it. palazzoriso.) is a palazzo from the seventeenth centuries, withdrawn except for its barren rocks, with astonishing pictures and installation between the shattered stucco and empty chimneys.

In the meantime, GAM - the Galleria d'Arte Monderna a Palermo (7 ) - is showing modern works from Sicily in a beautifully renovated building. It is the most unearthed place on the isle, and you can roam an whole city - there are court mansions with decorated wall and tessellated floor, a market square with pillars and stores, the old bathrooms that still hold waters, and an amphitheater that is covered with weed.

The cobblestone roads have been used by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans for centuries. In a cobblestone alley, this old café specializes in Sicilian-style fastfood, such as orancini ( "fried biscuits " with various glopy fillings) or sightedde (boiled mushrooms in a brooch roll). This charming open-air canteen in Piazza Bologni is one of the Renaissance buildings next to the Bourbon King's sculpture.

Situated in the old stable of the great Palazzo Gangi, this small village is one of the best places to eat in Venice, yet it' s still inexpensive. Led by the Rizzo family, it combines authentic local cuisine with an extravagant touch of the time. Inexpensive open-air table in Piazza Bellini, the most beautiful place in Piazza Bellini, between the Santa Caterina and the Norman San Cataldo with its Arabic -style cupolas.

Perhaps the best panoramic views of the city, this simple, contemporary café looks out over the impudent Norman spires of Domplatz. Furnished by two gastronomes, it also offers Sicilian-Asian dishes served by a traditional cook. Favoured by a younger audience, this busy place in the old city is ideal for spending a weekend listening to live and listening to live entertainment.

With only 15 seats, this drink offers fine blends to the sounds of 1920s Frenchspeakers. A Norman guard tower, which has been in the same hands since the Renaissance, has an antique place near the church with basic vacation homes in its paved atrium. Situated in the old part of the city, this place offers breakfasts in a main patio and has plain, contemporary rooms, all of which are furnished with contemporary local crafts.