Ayo visto lo mappamundi
É la carta de naviguari,
Ma Xixilia me pari
La più bella d’aquesto mundi
I have seen the map of the world/And the charts used by navigators/But I think Sicily/The most beautiful of this world (15th century Catalan-Sicilian song)
This is a song from the 15th century sung by the sailors of the Catalan- Sicilian fleets. In those days Sicily was part of the kingdom of Aragon, later Spain, and it represented the core of trading for the mighty merchants of Barcelona.
We have chosen this song to introduce our travel suggestions because we think that its words really express what Sicily has been for many centuries. A beautiful land, admired by sailors, artists, merchants and travellers and exposed to the linguistic and cultural interchanges with the rest of the Mediterranean countries.
Sicily is known for its Norman-Arab-Byzantine cathedrals, Greek temples, Roman theatres, Spanish squares and processions, Phoenician ruins and Arabic food and therefore the question is: what is Sicilian then?
An answer is not easy but we hope to explain it a bit more by saying that Sicilian is the encounter of all those foreign influences with the beauty of the landscapes, the mighty mountains and the blue sea, the fertile lands and the dry sands, the green vineyards and the yellow wheat fields.. Sicilian is an ironic eye that observes and absorbs what comes from outside but filters and puts it into an insular and relative perspective. Sicilian is the drama of a country that despite its richness has always suffered of a creative and disruptive permanent chaos.
And we like to share the great passion and interest for what is Sicily with those travellers who genuinely want to know this country and its people, landscapes, culture, history, culinary traditions, agriculture and geology.
This is why we called our tour operator Paesaggio Sicilia (Landscape Sicily). A landscape is a composition of different elements that, singularly taken, are perhaps not always relevant but all together shape the world. A landscape is a cultural image, a pictorial way of representing, structuring or symbolising surroundings. It is a way to perceive the history and the culture of a population and a country by embracing all the visible and the invisible features.
Our tours and travel suggestions are thought for all those travellers who want to visit a country by respecting the local culture and the environment, moving freely but discretely in those areas off the most beaten tourist tracks and taking part in several different activities to experience our daily life and culture.
Our tours move at the speed of nature: not everything can be seen but a lot can be experienced and enjoyed with no stress.
Chiara Spinnato, Paesaggio Sicilia Tours