Sicily on screen
Limelight Arts Travel staff
Have you watched The White Lotus? Its dark humour and biting social satire is not for everyone, but the second season is set in Sicily and filmed in Taormina and Cefalù. So we’ve been slightly distracted from the plot by the glorious backdrop that Sicily offers, and it’s inspired us to think about our favourite Sicilian filming locations.
Here is a small selection, with many of the films available on MUBI, a streaming platform offered through public libraries; on Netflix or SBS On Demand; and, in some cases, on YouTube with subtitles.
Savoca, a pleasantly uncrowded alternative to nearby Taormina
1. Savoca
How can we not start with the cinematic masterpiece that is Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather (1972)?! Key scenes from the entire series were shot in Sicily, but the island really comes to life in the first instalment. Savoca, a small hill town in the island’s north-eastern tip, stands in as the scene of the romance between Michael Corleone and the ill-fated Apollonia. You can even follow the “Godfather Wedding Walk” through town.
But there’s more to Savoca than icons of Western film. It has an amazing panoramic position close by the Straits of Messina, and there are a number of unique sites to explore, such as a medieval synagogue or the mummified remains of over 300 aristocrats in the town’s Capuchin monastery.
We think Savoca is an excellent alternative to nearby Taormina (the filming location for much of season 2 of The White Lotus), which is increasingly overwhelmed by large visitor numbers.
Sandstone “monsters” at Bagheria’s Villa Palagonia - Goethe reports that locals feared they would bring on miscarriages
2. Bagherìa
This seaside town to Palermo’s east has nurtured some great Italians, including painter Renato Guttuso and writer Dacia Maraini. Goethe visited in the eighteenth century and thought that the monstruous sandstone carvings of Bagherìa’s Villa Palagonia were among the most amazing (and terrifying) things that he saw on his entire Grand Tour.
Time and again, directors have turned to Bagherìa. It provided many locations for Tornatore’s classic and deeply personal film, Cinema Paradiso (1988), for example. The director grew up in Bagherìa and returns to it – and some of its darker aspects – in another film, Baarìa (2009), where the title references the town’s name in the local dialect.
One of the best modern chroniclers of Bagherìa’s many complexities – stunning baroque villas, modern over-development, the birthplace of great cultural figures – is Peter Robb. He weaves all of the town’s intrigues together in a classic chapter of Midnight in Sicily and, while it’s not a film, it’s certainly cinematic in its depiction of Sicily’s fascinating contradictions.
The honey-coloured hues of Noto, one of Sicily’s glorious baroque towns
3. Noto
You’ll catch a glimpse of Bagherìa’s Villa Palagonia in Michelangelo Antonioni’s masterful L’Avventura (1960), where it stands in for a customs house in Milazzo. This film follows an attractive man and woman as they somewhat vaguely look for a friend who’s disappeared during a sail around the island.
L’Avventura bears the hallmarks of any Antonioni film, from monumental cinematography to a soaring 1960s soundtrack and the cool detachment of ice maidens like Monica Vitti. One of its most iconic scenes shows Vitti taking a passeggiata or stroll in the elegant square of Noto. The town appears to be entirely inhabited by men, all enthralled by Vitti, who gradually becomes aware of their fixation over a single long take.
The White Lotus paid homage to this scene in a shot-by-shot recreation filmed on location in Noto. Like a number of towns in south-eastern Sicily, Noto was entirely rebuilt following a 1693 earthquake, and its main pedestrian axis now unfurls like a baroque string of sandstone pearls, with palace following church following palace in a giant open-air set.
Looking over the rooftops of Ragusa Ibla to its twin town, Upper Ragusa, across the ravine
4. Ragusa
South-eastern Sicily is full of baroque towns like Noto, and the hill town of Ragusa is another. It was rebuilt in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries over two locations, separated from one another by a ravine offering a dramatic view.
Ragusa’s squares, palaces and churches lend themselves to cinematic action, embodying the theatrical style that lay at the heart of the Baroque. Divorzio all’italiana (dir. Pietro Germi, 1961), which stars Marcello Mastroianni and a young Stefania Sandrelli, was filmed in Ragusa Ibla and is a classic of Italian cinema. A bored Sicilian nobleman, tired of his wife, falls in love with his young cousin. But what to do when divorce is illegal? Something murderous, naturally.
There’s dark comedy too in the Montalbano television series, much of which is filmed in the baroque towns of the so-called Val di Noto. Ragusa Ibla stands in for the location of Montalbano’s police headquarters, and he often surveys the extraordinary landscape of town and ravine after yet another long lunch.
A signature view of prickly pear, volcano and the wine-dark sea, on the Aeolian Islands
5. The Aeolian Islands
Home to mythical Aeolus, keeper of the winds, these wind-blown and remote islands off Sicily’s north-eastern tip were a trading depot of the ancient world. Thanks to millennial volcanic action, the Aeolian Islands were one of Antiquity’s best sources of obsidian, a hard black stone that was sought after for use as blades. The volcanoes are still active – Stromboli is almost continuously erupting – and form an extraordinary panorama, precipitous mountain-islands that rise out of the blue sea and are fringed with black volcanic sand beaches. These memorable panoramas are included on our Secret Sicily tours.
It’s a natural backdrop for high drama, and the islands feature in scores of Italian films. There’s Il Postino (dir. Massimo Troisi and Michael Radford, 1995), which stars a lovelorn Troisi in his final role; or A Bigger Splash (dir. Luca Guadagnino, 2015), a psychological thriller starring Tilda Swinton with more style than substance, set on the ‘jet-set’ island of Pantelleria. A comic vignette in Nanni Moretti’s Caro diario (1993; Dear Diary) sees a beleaguered writer seek refuge on the islands, only to be plagued by modernity, noise and spoiled children.
For a masterpiece of Italian cinema, however, go no further than Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli (1950) – despite all the tut-tutting in conservative America over its production. Rossellini ‘abandoned’ his lover, diva Anna Magnani, for the young and beautiful Ingrid Bergman, and Magnani went on to take her revenge by making a rival film on a nearby island, Vulcano. In Stromboli, Bergman plays Karin, a displaced person who escapes internment’s drudgery by marrying a guard. Following him to his volcanic home, she feels increasingly trapped in a traditional, poor and barren place, and the volcano’s helpful eruption during filming lent an extraordinary effect to the final result.
John Julius Norwich referred to Cefalù’s cathedral bell towers as fraternal, not identical twins - they are subtly different!
6. Cefalù
You can make out the twin towers of Cefalù’s Norman cathedral in the beach scenes of season 2, The White Lotus. Inside the cathedral are exquisite Norman mosaics, the main reason for a cultural excursion, but the town itself is pleasant and mostly off the tourist track. It’s provided a backdrop for numerous other films, including Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso, and is one of the bases on our Secret Sicily tour.
Our favourite is We Still Kill the Old Way (dir. Elio Petri, 1967), a dark film based on Leonardo Sciascia’s novel A ciascuno il suo (To Each His Own). Sicily’s greatest modern writer, Sciascia chronicled the highs and lows of life on the Mediterranean’s largest island throughout his writing (and political) career, and in English he’s probably best known for The Day of the Owl (also made into a film).
We Still Kill the Old Way follows a professor who takes it upon himself to investigate two local murders, falling in love with one of the widows and increasingly caught up in a complex and corrupt world that he underestimates. The film’s code of silence (omertà), octopus-like tentacles of corruption, and claustrophobic sense of inevitability all indirectly reference the Sicilian Mafia, one of Sciascia’s lifelong targets.
Petri made much of his work in the 1960s and 1970s, and behind its impeccable style lies a clear political comment on the rapid social and political changes of modern Italy. We Still Kill the Old Way can be watched in its entirety on YouTube, with subtitles.
You’d never know that the ornate world of The Leopard lay behind the facade of Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi, in central Palermo (photo: Wolfgang Moroder, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
7. Palermo
Finally, Sicily’s political capital is one of the most fascinating places on the island, if not in all of Italy. A vibrant and sometimes chaotic mix of Greek, Roman, Arabic, Norman, Spanish and – today – north African influences, it’s Italy’s original melting pot and offers a treasure trove of riches. From superlative Norman mosaics to a fine archaeological museum, outstanding baroque art, and a unique and proud street food culture – Palermo has it all. Most tours only scratch its surface, which is why we spend six nights there on our Essential Sicily tour.
Capturing Palermo’s essence on film is difficult. Many of the city’s riches lie behind closed doors: think of The Leopard (1963), Luchino Visconti’s masterpiece. Its key ball scene was filmed inside the Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi, a glorious and well-preserved private residence that offers only a sober facade to the bustling ancient neighbourhood in which it lies.
Outside, on the street, Palermo has been well captured by Roberto Faenza’s 2005 film, Come Into the Light (Italian, Alla luce del sole). It tells the real-life story of Pino Puglisi, a priest – played by Luca Zingaretti aka Montalbano – who pushed back against Mafia influence in his struggling Palermo neighbourhood. Puglisi was a courageous warrior against organised crime, particularly its effect on the poor children in his parish, and the film was made against the backdrop of his impending beatification.
Another film that offers an insightful view of Palermo is a documentary, Kim Longinotto’s Shooting the Mafia (2019). Available at both Amazon.com and on YouTube, it’s a fascinating biopic of Letizia Battaglia, one of Italy’s first women photojournalists and, like Puglisi, a tireless chronicler of the fight against the Mafia in Sicily. Iconoclastic, eccentric and with an unerring eye, Battaglia left a stunning photographic record of Sicily in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
Explore the varied landscapes of Sicily, and its staggering range of cultural riches, with Limelight Arts Travel. Our Essential Sicily tour, which typically departs in late October and again in March, takes advantage of the low season and of two long-stay bases to explore the island in depth.
We offer a complementary itinerary, Secret Sicily, in May, which surveys other aspects of the island and its interior to offer a comprehensive perspective on this fascinating island.
Discover more at our tour program.
EXPLORE Sicily with limelight arts travel
Secret Sicily
May 2024
Discover the delights of Sicily beyond the big cities and beyond the tourist crowds. Explore less-visited archaeological and artistic sites while based in beautiful coastal and rural locations.
