I booked 3 nights in Palermo for before we start our RS tour on the 2nd.
Palermo is amazing! It’s beautiful, dilapidated, grand, and exotic. I absolutely love it.
I am staying at the Grand Hotel Et Des Palmes. It’s about a mile from the RS tour hotel. It’s a gorgeous old palazzo - built as a 19th century residence for a family. Breakfast is great - not the over-the-top buffet, but something a little more elegant feeling - quality baked goods, yogurt with fresh honey, tons of fruit, and an egg station.
There are sites that I don’t have time for but these are the ones I picked:
1) Teatro Massimo - did the 40 minute guided tour. Very basic tour but all I wanted was to get into the building and so I was happy.
2) Palazzo Butera - A Baroque palace from early 18th century. It’s a showstopper - go if you find yourself in Palermo. You enter into Mediterranean-feeling courtyards, do a few rooms of modern art, and then you wind your way up and into the palace. There’s beautiful architecture and some really unusual furniture from a wide range of eras, but there’s also a huge green-and-white tiled terrace, with views all around Palermo. Further up the grand staircases, you reach a room that lets you “hover” above the roof - gaining unique knowledge about the ceiling and room design of the palazzo. And finally - up even more stairs - you exit onto a small metal terrace…way, way up, with more incredible 360 degree views of Palermo.
3) No Mafia Memorial - Free to enter, with a moderate amount of English signage. Lots of photo documentation of crime scenes. I think I would have gotten more out of it if I had a better understanding of the history before I visited or took a guided tour.
4) Palermo Cathedral - The cathedral itself is spectacular from the outside. The inside was way more modern than I was expecting. We wanted to climb to the roof but rain prevented it. Instead, we went over to the connected Diocesan Museum and that was a nice surprise. There’s some art installations, but there are rooms full of tiles, some palatial rooms, and a look-out view onto the Palermo Cathedral that is alone worth the entrance cost.
Next up will be the Norman Palace, some churches, and the Villino Florio - an art nouveau house from about 1900.