STOCK PHOTOGRAPHS of ENNA PROVINCE, SICILY

SEARCH FOR THE SOUL OF ITALY

This article originally appeared in Italy Magazine but has been deliberately truncated to preserve my copyright. If you wish to read the full text, please request it by email (john@heseltine.co.uk).

"Italy without Sicily leaves no symbol for the soul, because it is there the key to everything is to be found." W. Goethe

It was April and I was visiting Sicily to photograph the principal cities, towns and sites for a well known publisher of guide books. In doing this work I knew that I would see untold riches that represent the island's cultural heritage as it changed hands from Phoenicians, Punics and Greeks to Romans, Vandals, Arabs and Normans, Aragonese and Spanish. To see the buildings that tell these stories, anyone visiting Sicily just once in a lifetime will want to visit Palermo, Cefalu, Agrigento, Catania, Siracusa and a host of other places at the very least, and that's without even thinking about the wonderful smaller islands that lie off Sicily's coast.

Everyone associates Sicily with fine beaches, its superb Mediterranean climate, the excellent food and wine, its splendid Greek and Roman ruins and, inevitably for its sinister associations with the Mafia. But there is much more to this island ... heading west from Catania, skirting around the ever present monolithic shape of Etna towards the centre of the island around Enna Province...Centuripe, known as the 'balcony of Sicily' ... Canadian War Cemetery at Agira, a sad scene with a distant view of mount Etna and a reminder of events in World War Two when heavy fighting took place around here as the Allied Forces forced the German and Italian armies back across the Straits of Messina.

On the road to Leonforte...impressive Granforte fountain contrasted with the green hills that make up the excellent panorama ... Nicosia ... the slopes of the Nebrodi Mountains and had its heyday in Norman times. Although it suffered from losing nearly half of its adult population to emigration in the mid twentieth century, it is an important agricultural and commercial centre full of atmospheric cobbled streets and old weathered men standing around conversing....

© John Heseltine