Viva Palermo e Santa Rosalia! | The Sicilian Wanderer
Viva Palermo e Santa Rosalia! (Typically shouted at the top of your lungs)
We do things large in Palermo, so we celebrate our patron Saint, Santa Rosalia, not once, but twice. In two very different ways.
We first go wild during the “Festino”, a traditional event with processions, street food, shows and so on. This happens every year, on the night between July 14th and 15th.
But then, very early in the morning of every September 4th, the day the Santuzza died, a ritual takes place, one that connects Palermo and her Saint through the strongest of bonds: l’Acchianata.
“Acchianare” in Sicilian means to climb, going up, and that’s exactly what happens. Thousands of people flock at the bottom of Mount Pellegrino and climb it for 4 km to reach the Sanctuary atop the mountain, which is shown here in the picture.
The cool fact is that what you see is just the facade of the church, as the rest of it is literally carved inside the mountain.
Like, literally, it’s a cave turned into a holy shrine.
Happy Santa Rosalia to all of you having this beautiful name, but most of all to my beautiful mum!
Don’t forget to Follow The Sicilian Wanderer on Facebook
My Grandmother came from Palermo.
Visited the shrine as a child.
Magnificent.
Wow! Will be making an order!
Here’s a short story I wrote inspired by our trip to Palermo:
Rosalia
So we’re sitting at a table at an outdoor café in Palermo, Sicily, me and my gorgeous wife Leola who smells like lilacs as we’re celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary and the September air feels like my wife’s fingers on my arm and we’re drinking Sambuca and who comes up but another one of those young women — one of those panhandling women with a baby… now don’t get me wrong I like babies… OK me and Leola tried for a few years to have one but nothing happened so we gave up, but this woman was using her baby to try to get money outta dumb American tourists, and me, I see ’em coming a mile away and I always say No, but my wife she’s smart and sweet, she’s a soft touch and she always gives them a bit of change, you know those little coins that ain’t worth much — spicci the Sicilians call it, so anyhow this woman she recognizes a pushover when she spots my wife and Leola says “What a precious baby!” and I think she’s gonna give this broad a little one- or two- or even five-cent coin and she gives her FIVE WHOLE EUROS and this pisses me off, but that’s Leola for you, and the next thing I see is the panhandling woman asks Leola if she wants to hold the kid and of course Leola says Yes and then I see the lady lean in and whisper in Leola’s ear and I’m worried she’s gonna talk my smart but sweet wife into giving her more money, and Leola pulls out her purse but there’s nothing I can do unless I want a Big Fight with my wife who I love despite it all, and I go to the bathroom, they call it bagno here or toilette, so when I come back there’s Leola holding the baby, a big-eyed girl in a pink sweater about nine or ten months old and Leola’s wiping spittle off the kid’s face and smoothing back the kid’s dark hair and Leola’s got this look in her eyes the same look my kid sister Kimmy used to get when she’d bring home a kitten, and I’m about to say “No Leola you can’t keep her”, so’s I look around and I don’t see the baby lady anywhere and I’m trying to think what she looks like — young and skinny, shiny black hair, long purple dress — but there’s crowds of people everywhere doing the evening passeggieta they call it here, that’s when they all go strolling after dinner, and I realize the baby lady is gone, she disappeared, she vanished… poof… and the crowd is swelling, it’s some kinda religious festival and there’s a parade starting up and a band’s playing, with the brass instruments mingling with the musical sound of Sicilian chatter, and I sit down and Leola bounces the baby on her knee and I said “Are you babysitting?” and she looks at me with those green-blue eyes of hers eyes like a salty sea and she said “She’s ours now, we need to name her, we need to get her a birth certificate so we can put her on my passport, we need to bring her home Honey, she’s ours, and maybe we can name her Rosalia after the Patron Saint of Palermo,” and I don’t know what to say, but I figure Leola would make a good Mamma being so smart and sweet — she’s a soft touch — so I order another round of Sambuca and a glass of milk for the kid.
By Sara Jacobelli
Published in Book #2 One-Sentence Stories: Intriguing New Anthologies of Stories Told in a Single Sentence