PALERMO, Sicily – After Dutch painter Antoon Van Dick started work on his portrait of the Madonna del Rosario in the Sicilian capital, he was obliged to flee to Genoa to escape an outbreak of bubonic plague and completed the masterpiece in the northern port city, after which it was shipped back to Sicily. The painting was hung in the baroque Oratory church of the Santissimo Rosario in San Domenico, where it can be admired as part of a winter tour of the constellation of little known artistic gems in the sun-drenched Sicilian capital. Lovers of Sicily may want to flock to the island this year before the dire prospect of the bridge over the strait of Messina, that the Italian government has pledged to build, ushers in a pestilential wave of visitors that may submerge the island in the “over tourism” swamping Venice and Florence.

I first visited Palermo in 1977 when I was a student and have returned often since, but only was able to admire the artistic secrets of the city’s ornate baroque oratory churches thanks to the erudite guide Thea Perrone, who together with charming interpreters from the Ulisse travel agency, Adrianna and Simona, shepherded a group of journalists and travel agents on a comprehensive trip organised by the provincial branch of Confesercenti, the association of tourist operators, stores and services.  Dazzling churches Signora Thea introduced us to included the Oratory of Santa Cita with its tranquil tree-lined courtyard while in the stunning Oratory of San Lorenzo hangs a copy of a painting by Caravaggio that was stolen in 1969 and sadly never recovered.

 Van Dyck arrived in Palermo in 1624, by which time he already was a renowned artist, with a commission to paint the portrait of the Viceroy, Emanuel Filiberto of Savoy. The portrait now hangs in England’s Dulwich Gallery but within months of it being completed the viceroy was dead, one of 10,000 victims of the plague in Palermo. Little wonder that the Flemish painter preferred to finish his painting of the Madonna from the relative safety of Genoa. As Dottoressa Perrone pointed out, the painting is notable for the small boy holding his nose in the foreground, evidently from the smell of the plague. Van Dyck’s other major work from his Palermo sojourn, the Santuzza depicting Saint Rosalie, who saved the city from the epidemic, is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York though Palermitani hope that one day it will be returned to Sicily.

 “We don’t want the bridge over the strait of Messina,” Salvo Basile, head of Confesercenti for Palermo province, told me during an aperitivo at a michelin restaurant in the reclaimed dock area of the city as the car ferry to Civitavecchia soared by. Like many Sicilians, Dott. Salvo points out the shortage of basic transport infrastructure on the island that the Rome government could address rather than splurging billions on the bridge that is expected to badly jolt the delicate ecological balance in the idyllic coastal countryside in Messina province.

 Palermo is a city of contrasts. Not far from the Michelin restaurant are popular neighborhoods such as the narrow Vicolo Brugno, which darkly warns away outsiders with graffiti saying ‘odio Napoli,’ I hate Naples. Elsewhere an old lady shields her hands from a passing photographer capturing her chatting with a neighbour from the door of a traditional basso, a one room windowless apartment more common in Naples than Palermo. In front of the door her washing is drying on the street.

 A stone’s throw away a street corner is adorned with a glass covered mural of Paolo Borsellino, the anti-mafia judge killed in a Mafia car bomb attack in 1992 while in the Palermo Duomo there hangs a portrait of Don Pino Puglisi, the anti-mafia Roman Catholic priest murdered by the Cosa Nostra in 1993.

 “Has the Mafia been defeated?” the elderly driver of the van ferrying usa round the city repeats my question. “I don’t think so. When I have a problem and I go to ask someone for advice about it, that’s the Mafia.”

 Whatever the case Palermo remains a safer city for tourists than Rome or Naples, both of which are infested with pickpockets on public transport in the summer months.

 When I worked in Sicily in the 1990s following the murders of judges Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone there was little choice among hotels with the Villa Igeia on the outskirts of the city the favoured haunt of journalists. These days there is an ample choice such as the Hotel Brunaccini, a recently restored aristocratic palazzo a short distance from the main via Roma pedestrian thoroughfare leading to the splendid Teatro Massimo.

 jp