PAUSA BISCOTTI

These were a welcome gift from my friends at the Museo della Memoria - Sicilia 1943 this morning and they've asked me to tell you that they are now on Trip Advisor.  That's chocolate salame you can see on the right.

REMEMBERING OPERATION HUSKY

Seventy years ago, on the night of 9th - 10th July 1943, the Allied invasion of Sicily began, with the landings from the sea beginning at dawn on the 10th.  Codenamed Operation Husky, the landings involved the 7th US Army under General Patton [the "Western Task Force"]  and the 8th British Army under General Montgomery including the 1st Canadian Infantry Division [the "Eastern Task Force"].  It is worth noting that, with seven divisions, this was a bigger force than that which landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day [1944].  The beaches at Pachino were stormed by 25,000 Canadians and, whilst the Americans made rapid progress in the West, the British and Canadian soldiers met with fierce Italo-German resistance in the East. In the campaign, 562 Canadian soldiers lost their lives.

It is in memory of these soldiers in particular that commemoration ceremonies in Sicily have been organised by Canada Company during this month and volunteer marchers are retracing the route of the original march by the Canadian soldiers. There has already been a commemoration ceremony at Pachino and on Friday it will be Modica's turn. Among the visiting Canadians will be 92-year-old veteran Captain Sheridan ["Sherry"] Atkinson who more or less accepted the surrender of Modica. You can read the thoughts of another veteran, Charles Hunter, on the Canada Company website. On July 30th a morning roll call for the Canadian soldiers who lost their lives will be held at the Canadian War Cemetery at Agira.

In January I visited the Allied Landings Museum [Museo dello Sbarco] in Catania and tonight I would like to tell you that there is a smaller, but very lovingly curated, museum on this theme in Modica:  The brainchild of Andrea Blefari and Antonino Montalto, the museum has a well annotated collection of uniforms, medals, unpublished and personal documents, arms, military equipment and photos.  Andrea and Antonino's aim is not only to keep the memory of Operation Husky alive but, in their own words, "to teach the young about the price that is sometimes paid for freedom."

You can visit the Museo della Memoria in Modica by appointment and you will find details on their website.

Andrea and Antonino have now collected so many memorabilia of the campaign that they need more space for their museum and this Commonwealth citizen hopes that the Comune di Modica will soon provide it.

The museum photos speak for themselves but my favourite is the enormous WW2 field kitchen. The second portable kitchen that you will see is from WW1.

Museo della Memoria, Sicilia 1943 - slideshows

A total of 14,864 soldiers from Italy, Germany, the USA and the Commonwealth lost their lives during the Allied Landings in Sicily.

A MORNING IN GIBILMANNA

In Palermo Province, nestling in the Madonie at 800 metres above sea level, is the village of Gibilmanna and on Sunday a friend and I joined a trip organised by those nice people at La Terra to visit it.  

The Sanctuary of Gibilmanna is its main attraction and the original building is said to have been part of a monastery founded by Gregorio Magno [Gregory the Great] prior to his becoming Pope in 590. After the Saracen conquest of Sicily in 878 the monastery was abandoned but hermits continuued to care for the church.  Under the Normans, many churches were restored and in 1535 the Cappuccini took over the care of the church.  Brother Sebastiano Majo da Gratteri founded the convent on the site in the same year and the present church structure dates from 1623. Among the goods received by the new church from the old one was a statue of the Madonna commissioned by the Capuchin hermit Giuliano de Placia di Miselmeri in 1533.  It is thought to have been sculpted by Antonello Gagini or a member of his artistic family. The altar is a later work by Baldassarre Pampillonia and dates from around 1684.

The church also has this Assunzione, by an unknown artist, above the main altar.  It was given to the Sanctuary in 1623:

Next to the Sanctuary is a folk museum which also contains ecclesiastical objects. Looking at richly embroidered vestments is not really my thing so I concentrated on the items from everyday life and tried to imagine the people who used them:

As many of you will know, I love Sicilian carts and was glad to realise, when I looked at its sides, that the one above had had its moments of glory:

More artwork from a cart:

I like pestles and mortars too!

Oops - what's a mad Welshwoman doing here?

These instruments were used for cutting the Communion bread. They came with very precise instructions:

Local heel bar?

Gibilmanna, then, is well worth a visit.  Who can guess where we went in the afternoon?

THE ALLIED LANDINGS MUSEUM

One of the many facts that I hadn't known about the Second World War is that Catania, because of its strategic position and the importance of its port, was the target of more Allied air raids than any other city in Sicily. No fewer than 87 air raids on Catania were recorded by Italian Supreme Command, as compared with 69 on Palermo and 58 on Messina. Ragusa, for the record, was targeted 27 times.  In reality there were probably more raids than this, as it is possible that some were deliberately not noted in the interests of morale.

I learnt this and absorbed much more knowledge that was new to me as I walked, with my friend Carol King, through the Museo dello Sbarco or Allied Landings in Sicily Museum in Catania on Saturday.  We had both wanted to visit the museum for some time but had never got around to it and we were pleasantly surprised by how well it is organised, its exhibits and excellent annotation.

As you enter the museum a guide tells you what to expect and about events leading up to the 1943 landings. There is backup on film as there is throughout the museum. The first exhibition area that you enter is a simulation of a Sicilian square of the time and you can see into meticulously recreated houses, offices and shops.  Then you are invited into a simulated air-raid shelter, where you can experience a "bombardment", complete with vibrations.  It was dark and quite scary!  As you emerge from this room, you realise you are again in the square, only now two-thirds of it have been destroyed in the raid.

The museum occupies three floors and some 3,000 square metres of space, so there is a lot to see. There are exhibits of newspapers and the propaganda of the period, a mock-up of a street and rooms with octagonal tables featuring electronic chronicles of the progress of the various armies from day to day.

There is a simulated bunker which you can enter, a reconstructed field hospital tent, and further on there are armaments and exhibitions of the military uniforms of all sides. There are also waxworks of  some of the main protagonists of WW2, including Churchill, Roosevelt, Mussolini, Hitler and King Vittorio Emanuele 111.  Towards the end, there is a reconstruction of the tent where the Cassibile Armistice was signed.

Both Carol and I were struck by the newsreel footage of the civilian population and, in particular, how thin so many of the people looked. The museum's excellent guidebook points out that the "liberators" were hailed not so much for any democratic ideals which they might have brought with them but because they symbolised the end of the killing and an end to that older enemy of Sicilians, hunger. Episodes such as the Mafia's alleged role in the landings and the Massacre at Acate [Biscari] are not overlooked.

The very last exhibit is an electronic memorial plaque dedicated to all the soldiers who lost their lives during the landings and ensuing Sicily campaign. One thousand of their names, selected at random, are read out in their own languages.  We both had a lump in our throats as we left.

A total of 14,864 soldiers from Italy, Germany, the USA and the Commonwealth lost their lives during the Allied Landings in Sicily.

RETURN OF THE LADY

I, for one, will be heading for Aidone in the spring to welcome a certain lady home.  This is my article about her for Italy Magazine this Tuesday:

Aphrodite Comes Home

A fifth century BC statue of Aphrodite is to return to its place of origin in Sicily during January following a long international argument and numerous analyses by experts. The “Aidone Aphrodite”, probably sculpted between 425 – 400 BC in Morgantina [Enna] was stolen in the second half of the twentieth century and was illegally sold to a London company. In 1986 it was acquired by the John Paul Getty Museum in the United States for $10 million. The Getty Museum’s administrators have always denied acquiring the statue illegally.

In 2001 a Sicilian court sentenced eighty-year-old Renzo Canavesi to two years’ imprisonment and imposed a fine of 40 billion lire for his part in removing the statue from Italy. Half of this figure represented the estimated value of the statue and the other half “moral damage” to the State of Italy.

The 2.2 – metre high statue is unusual for its period in that it is highly finished on all sides. Most statues of its time were finished only in front. The body parts of the statue are of marble but Aphrodite’s drapes are represented in calcareous stone. Some experts believe that the statue represents Persephone or her mother Demeter, who were both much venerated in Morgantina, rather than Aphrodite. The Getty Museum disputed the statue’s Sicilian provenance for some time but in 2007 experts proved that the stone used was from the Siracusa-Ragusa area of Sicily.

The statue is being returned under an agreement signed by Italy and the Getty Museum in 2007. It is the last of 40 antiquities to be returned to Italy by the Museum. The statue will be dismantled into three parts for the journey and a seismic wave isolator has been built to protect it from earthquakes once it arrives in Sicily.

Sebastiano Missineo, the Sicilian Regional Councillor for Culture, visited the Getty Museum to view the statue yesterday. He said that a special site will be prepared for it at the Archaeological Museum in Aidone. In the meantime, the statue will be displayed at the Palazzo dei Normanni in Palermo for Easter and will afterwards be moved to the Chiesa di San Domenico in Aidone.

VIVA VINCENZO

Vincenzo Bellini
Image:  Wikimedia Commons

The city of Catania is having difficulty in raising sufficient funds to stage its second Bellini Festival, due to begin on 29th November.   I'm sad about this as the city is justly proud of its most famous son, whose birthplace is one of the nicest museums of its kind anywhere.  And you just have to like a composer who inadvertently graced a pasta dish with the name of his best known heroine.

The Catanesi are hoping that the Regional Government will come up with the funds but just in case it doesn't, let's have a mini Bellini festa on Sicily Scene tonight.   

Clara Polito e l'Orchestra del Teatro Massimo Bellini di Catania - Casta Diva [Norma]

Cincin, Vincenzo!

ITALY MAGAZINE ROUND-UP - 7

Here is my pick of the past week's Italy Magazine articles:

If you are a physically energetic person and, unlike me, are fond of the countryside - like, perhaps, my friend Sally - and are also an Italofile, there are some new trails in the Dolomites that might interest you.  If, like me, you are a city person you might prefer this exhibition and these other summer events in Milan.

American reader Nick Calvano told me the wonderful story of how he found his Italian relatives via the internet.  Part 2 of the story is coming in the mag later this week so do stay tuned.

Clooney and Canalis kept us all guessing again - will they or won't they and will it be this week?  Come on, George - do a Sarkozy! Finally I gave up and went in search of a nice animal story. Ahhhh....

For my Patti Chiari column, I explained what happens when I tell visitors from the UK that we are going to tour the syphilis museum.  Read the article to find out!

Happy reading.

ONLY IN SICILY

Do pop over to Sicily Guide to read about the Sicilian Festival of Unfinished Public Works.  Yes, there's a museum of them!  Thanks, Sicily Guide, for the best laugh I've had in ages.

A MOST UNUSUAL MUSEUM

Although I had visited Modica seventeen times before settling here and have been here for over two years , I would not have known of the existence of the Museo Tommaso Campailla had I not chanced upon a newspaper article about it last month. Tucked away in two rooms in what was the Ospedale Santa Maria della Pietà and is now a municipal office building behind the Piazza Matteotti in Modica Bassa, the museum is not signposted, nor is it mentioned in any guide book which I have consulted. To visit, you have to make an appointment and this was not easy: of course no one answered the number given in the newspaper during August and when I did get through this week I was told I would have to ring another number. This, in turn, proved to be a wrong one and eventually I rang the tourist office and yes, it is their staff who have the keys and act as guides for the visit, so I made an appointment for yesterday morning. To my shame, I arrived there in the good old Italian punctuality tradition of 45 minutes late, due to the fact that a one-way system has been introduced in the via Sacro Cuore, causing buses to be rerouted and resulting in chaos [which I am sure to rant about at length in another post]. I apologised and was told there was no problem. Sometimes there is much to be said for those with pazienza.

The museum is unusual because it is devoted to the treatment of syphilis. Tommaso Campailla [1668 - 1740] was first famous as a poet and philosopher. He was admired by the Irish philosopher George Berkeley who came to Modica to meet him. It was not until the death of his father that Campailla was able to indulge his passion for medicine, for at that time, the profession was not considered respectable. I have been unable to ascertain why or how he became interested in the treatment of venereal diseases, but treat them he did, creating wooden botti [barrels] for the patients to sit in and inhale mercury infusions , an idea that appears to have been pioneered in France, where the patient's head would project from the top of the "barrel". Campailla's design was squarer, and the patient sat with his /her whole body in the "cabin". The wood was of a special kind which Campailla ordered from abroad and to this day, no one knows exactly what it was.

First the "cabin" was heated to 70 F by a brazier and then, the brazier removed, the patient would enter, carrying a small oil lamp for light, which he / she would hang on a nail, and a smaller brazier which he / she would place on the ground beneath his / her feet. [Many prostitutes were treated.]There were two holes in the door of the cabin, and through the top one the patient was monitored. Through the second, at the bottom of the door, the mercury infusion was poured onto the small brazier. The dose for a first treatment was half a gram of cinnabar and a pinch of incense [the incense being added to facilitate breathing]. This was doubled at the next treatment. Eventually, the patient would sweat the infusion off, back onto the small brazier. The sessions lasted for ten minutes, on alternate days, and normally a patient would have nine or ten treatments. In more serious cases, two grams of cinnabar would be used and the patient would receive up to thirteen treatments. After a "cabin" session the patient would lie on a bed to continue the "sweating it out" process. By all accounts the treatments worked provided the disease was caught early enough and some patients with rheumatic conditions were also treated.

In the pictures you can see the actual botti and some of the instruments used. The fifth photo shows an instrument for separating blood from plasma and on the right of the seventh one you can see early electrical centrifuges. The last picture shows a chair, from a later era, which was used for gynaecological examinations, for the building continued to be used as a hospital for many years. Campailla's methods were used until the discovery of penicillin.