Kalsa District and Salinas Archeological Museum on Saturday in Palermo

Our Saturday in Palermo was a mix of last-minute plans and things I had planned for earlier in the week that we had not gotten to do. The highlights were (another) walk around the Kalsa District, our favorite neighborhood in Palermo, and then an evening visit to Palermo’s Salinas Archeological Museum (more on that later).

The afternoon began with a stop by the Capo Clothes Market. Ok, it’s not entirely a thing – the Capo Market with its seafood and fried rice balls and such is what people know. But once you get near the end of the market, it shifts and there are a number of clothes, textile and fabric stores. On our food tour a few days earlier, Therese had seen some things she liked and said “we have to come back!” so we made note of where exactly we were, and returned to buy a pillowcase and some fabric. A great start to the day.

From the clothes market, we headed toward Kalsa, knowing that along the way we would pass a cart that had wonderful Sfincione, the street food that is like a pizza with no cheese on it – this too was something we had happened past on the food tour. Mmmmm, a bit of lunch to tide us over!

From there, it wasn’t quite as far as I had thought it would be, to get to Kalsa and the churches that were in my plan for that day. The first was the tiny Gancia Church.

This church looked like it was under substantial renovation – there was quite a bit of scaffolding, covering several of the side chapels. But there was still a lot to see – that combination of medieval and Baroque that one sees so much in Palermo’s churches.

Next, we went to Spasimo Church. This one is very unusual, because it was never finished, and is no longer a church (it is used as a theater now). So it looks more like a ruin, and behind it is a yard full of remnants of stonework – not sure if they are from this site, or were brought from elsewhere.

After the Spasimo Church, visited the most impressive of the three churches, the Magione Church. We were hampered a tiny bit in our visit there by the fact that they were preparing for a wedding that was going to take place an hour later. So we heard a friend of the bride practicing the song she was going to sing during the service, and had to avoid the preparations otherwise.

But we did get to visit the lovely cloisters, probably my favorite part of the church. And we got our fill overall – as we were leaving, some of the first guests for the wedding were starting to arrive. Perfect timing!

With the afternoon growing warm, it was time for us to return to our bed & breakfast and have our siesta. We had made dinner reservations and also had a reservation of sorts for an evening tour of the local archeological museum, so we wanted to rest a bit and get dressed up and such.

Our dinner was at the Trattoria del Massimo, which is a restaurant near the main opera house in Palermo, which is called the Teatro del Massimo. It was a good thing we had reservations – even though it was the beginning of their dinner service, and the place was huge and empty, they only seemed to have one area for parties of two like ours. As a result, there were several small groups who came in thinking they could just do a walk-in, and the restaurant turned them away!

Anyway, the food was good. The usual sort of thing – great fresh seafood, fresh-made pasta, with fresh tomatoes.

So yes, about the museum. We had learned a couple days earlier from our hosts at the bed & breakfast that on Saturday night there was going to be a “night of museums” where the city would close off a bunch of streets to automobile traffic, and museums would stay open late and have special programming. One of the museums participating was the Salinas Archeological Museum, which was totally not on my radar at all. But since it sounded like it might be a fun evening, we got our name on the reservation list, and did it.

So we had a bit of a guided tour of the museum. Ours was the English tour, given by an actual archeologist, who spoke English with a very thick accent, but she tried very hard to make herself understood, and she was totally lovely. There were only like five of us on the tour, so we got to ask as many questions as we wanted. The guide told us a lot about the history of Sicily as a background for the art – about all the conflict between the Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans over who would dominate the island (and then of course, later on the Muslims and Normans took their turns as dominating the island and influencing its culture as well).

After we left the museum, we went across the street to a bar and had limoncello and chilled for a bit. Then we walked across Piazza Verdi and headed back towards our home base, stopping for a while in front of the Teatro Politeama to hang out in the square. It was a cool but not chilly evening, and there were lots of people enjoying themselves. A great end to another surprisingly rich and fun day in Palermo, Sicily.

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