What Tourists Get Wrong About Sicily: A Conversation with Maria from Palermo
Maria Ferrante has lived in Palermo her entire life. She runs a small B&B in the Kalsa quarter, teaches Italian to foreign students three days a week, and has strong opinions about how tourists experience her island. We sat at a tiny table outside a bar on Via Maqueda while she drank her third espresso of the morning.
You've been hosting tourists for 12 years. What's the first mistake most visitors make?
They go to Taormina first. Everyone flies into Catania and drives straight to Taormina because it's the most famous place, and then they think Sicily is basically a pretty hilltop town with expensive restaurants and Corso Umberto full of souvenir shops selling ceramic Trinacria symbols. Taormina is beautiful — I'm not saying skip it. But it's the most untypical place in Sicily. It's been a tourist town since the Grand Tour in the 1800s.
Come to Palermo first. Walk through Ballaro market at 7AM when the vendors are setting up and shouting prices. Get lost in the Kalsa. Eat a panino con la milza — the spleen sandwich — at Porta Carbone near the port. That's Sicily. Then go to Taormina for a day and enjoy it for what it is.
Speaking of food — what should tourists order that they usually don't?
Everyone knows arancini and cannoli. Good. But the thing that separates tourists from locals is the stigghiola — grilled lamb intestines wrapped around a skewer with spring onion. You find it at Ballaro market and the Vucciria. It costs 3 EUR and it's extraordinary. Also, pani ca meusa — the spleen sandwich I mentioned. You either get it schietto (plain, with lemon) or maritato (married, with ricotta and caciocavallo cheese). Most tourists can't bring themselves to try it and that's their loss.
And stop ordering caprese salads in August. The tomatoes are better in September. In August, order pasta con le sarde — sardines with wild fennel and pine nuts. That's what's actually in season.
What about the riposo — the afternoon shutdown? Tourists seem frustrated by it.
Of course they are. Because they come from places where shops are open 12 hours a day and they think we're lazy for closing from 1 to 4PM. But try walking around Palermo at 2PM in July. It's 38 degrees. The stone radiates heat. Even the dogs lie flat.
Riposo isn't laziness. It's intelligence. We work morning, we rest, we work evening. We eat a long lunch with family. We live longer — Sicilians have some of the highest life expectancy in Europe. Maybe the rest of the world should try closing for three hours instead of eating a sandwich at their desk.
Plan your day around it. Visit Mount Etna in the morning (the cable car at Rifugio Sapienza costs 35 EUR, and the summit 4x4 is 65 EUR — worth it). Then come back, have a long lunch, nap, and go to the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento at 5PM when the light is perfect and the entry is still 12 EUR.
What's the most overrated thing in Sicily?
The touristy cannoli. I'll say it. The cannoli at the famous places in Taormina and the airport? Filled hours ago, the shell is soggy, the ricotta has too much sugar. A proper cannolo should be filled in front of you — you watch the pastry chef pipe the sheep's milk ricotta into the shell seconds before you eat it. The shell should shatter. If it doesn't shatter, walk away.
Café Spinnato in Palermo on Via Principe di Belmonte does them right. Or Caffè Sicilia in Noto — Corrado Assenza is a genius. Those two places. Forget the rest.
Where do you send guests that most guidebooks miss?
Scicli. Everyone goes to Noto for the baroque architecture, and Noto deserves it, but Scicli is quieter, less staged, and just as beautiful. It was a filming location for the Inspector Montalbano TV series, and Sicilians love it for that. Walk the limestone streets at sunset. Free to wander. Nobody there.
Also, Cefalù's La Rocca. Most tourists walk the beach and the cathedral — which is free and has Byzantine mosaics that rival Monreale — but they skip the fortress climb. It's 4 EUR and 45 minutes of steep climbing, but the view from the top over the town and the Tyrrhenian Sea is the single best panorama in Sicily. Go at golden hour.
And the Aeolian Islands. People don't realize how close they are. A hydrofoil from Milazzo takes 90 minutes and costs 20-30 EUR. Stromboli at night, watching the volcano erupt against the stars with a guide for 25 EUR — you don't forget that. Ever.
If you want a similar local perspective, our interview with Dimitris in Rhodes captures that same insider knowledge for Greece's medieval island.
Any tourist behavior that drives locals crazy?
The photographing without buying. People stand in Ballaro market taking photos of vendors for 20 minutes and don't buy a single thing. The market vendors are working. Buy something. An arancino is 2-3 EUR. A bunch of figs is 1 EUR. You're photographing someone's livelihood — the least you can do is participate in it.
Also, driving in Palermo if you don't have to. The traffic has rules, but they're Palermo rules, not rules from a book. The horn means everything — hello, goodbye, watch out, I love you, move faster. If you don't speak horn, you don't speak Palermo traffic. Take the bus or walk. Park outside the center.
What time of year would you tell a friend to visit?
Late September. No question. Water is still 25°C. Temperature is 26°C. The wine harvest is happening — drive to the Etna wine region and some producers let you pick grapes for free if you buy a case. Prices for everything drop 40% after September 1st. And the light. The September light in Sicily is the most beautiful thing this island produces, and this island produces a lot of beautiful things.
Avoid August 15th — Ferragosto. All of Italy goes on vacation at the same time. Everything books out. Prices peak. It's an island of 5 million people trying to get to the same beaches.
Last question. What's your favorite meal in all of Sicily?
My mother's pasta alla Norma. But since you can't eat at my mother's house — go to Trattoria dei Compari in Catania. Near Piazza del Duomo, down a side street. The pasta alla Norma there uses fried aubergine that's been salted and drained properly, not the soggy version most places serve. It's about 10 EUR. And they'll bring you Etna Rosso house wine for 3 EUR a glass that's better than most bottles you'd pay 20 EUR for.
Order the pasta, drink the wine, and stop trying to see all of Sicily in five days. You can't. Pick three places. Go slow. Eat everything. Come back next year for the rest.
That's the Sicilian way, apparently. And after 12 years of talking to Maria's guests, I'm starting to think she might be right.
