Sicily Culture

Sicily has produced a disproportionate share of Italian literature and holds traditions that exist nowhere else on the peninsula, most of them still functioning rather than preserved.

Language

Sicilian is a distinct Romance language, not a dialect of Italian, and it carries the island's history in its vocabulary — Greek, Arabic, Norman French, Catalan and Spanish words all survive in everyday use. It is widely spoken, and the Scuola siciliana at Frederick II's court produced the first poetry written in an Italian vernacular, inventing the sonnet in the process.

Puppets and processions

The Opera dei Pupi — marionette theatre performing Carolingian romances of Charlemagne's knights — was among the first traditions inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage list, in 2001. Palermo and Catania keep distinct styles and different puppet mechanisms.

Religious festivals are the island's largest public events and are taken seriously. Palermo's Festino di Santa Rosalia in July, Catania's Sant'Agata in February — among the largest religious processions in the world — and Trapani's 24-hour Easter Misteri all involve most of their cities.

Writing

Sicily has two Nobel laureates in literature, Luigi Pirandello and Salvatore Quasimodo. Giovanni Verga's realism, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo — the definitive novel of Sicilian aristocratic decline — Leonardo Sciascia's books on power and complicity, and Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano novels, filmed in the Val di Noto, form a body of work that keeps returning to the same questions about authority and appearance.

Craft

Caltagirone has made ceramics since Arab rule and its staircase of 142 tiled steps is the town's centrepiece. Painted carretti, the decorated carts, survive mostly as festival objects. Teste di Moro — the ceramic heads used as planters — carry a legend about a Sicilian woman and a Moorish lover that is told in several incompatible versions.