Palermo, Once You Stop Expecting Pretty

Mercato di Ballarò

Palermo doesn't try to be pretty first. It tries to be honest, and the beauty shows up anyway once you stop expecting it to behave like the rest of Italy.

This is a city built by Normans on top of Arab foundations, then decorated by Spanish viceroys, then left half in ruins by wartime bombing nobody fully repaired. Walk through the centro storico and it's all still there at once: a Byzantine mosaic ceiling inside a church that looks unremarkable from the street, a bombed out palazzo with a fig tree growing through what used to be a window, market stalls shouting prices in a dialect that isn't quite standard Italian.

The Ballarò and Vucciria markets are where the city actually lives. Go in the late morning, not for photographs but for lunch: fried chickpea panelle, boiled octopus sold from a cart, someone's family recipe for pasta con le sarde sold off a folding table. This isn't a city performing for visitors. It's simply extraordinary while it goes about its day.