Perfectly Pedara

We feel so blessed not to have to live in military housing that we feel rather guilty that after more than a year living in Nicolosi, we haven't really gotten to know the town next door.



Right next to each other, Pedara and Nicolosi are sister towns. And between the townsfolk there is more than just a hint of sibling rivalry. Both are charming and distinct. To Pedara's envy, Nicolosi has done a better job of capitalizing on its tourism with its boutiques, eateries, waterfall roundabouts and newly paved sidewalks lined with trees and flowers.



Pedara may feel as if it's Nicolosi's ugly step sister. But the truth is...at least from an outsider's perspective...that no matter how much Nicolosi succeeds at accessorizing, Pedara has an old world charm and an innate elegance that just can't be contrived.

Perfectly Pedara

On our first ITT trip to Etna, our tour guide Alfina Rapisarda stopped to show us the church of Nicolosi. We were so impressed!

But not more than 3 miles away, Pedara's main church is without a doubt one of the most impressive fresco churches in Sicily. This sanctuary is a hidden treasure of Etna!

A Sight to See in Sicily!

In Sicily, the journey is as fun as the destination.

A lack of traffic lights in Sicily is because there's enough natural and manmade chaos, along with humorous roadside attractions to keep you watchful and speed-conscious on the roads.

Our adventure to Nelson's Castle included an outburst of rain and then pelting hail that you can see hitchiking on our car hood.



That was followed by a herd of at least 150 cows that we had to share a lane with...



And then you have to stop your car because an adorable vision like this stops your heart! - an old Sicilian man, his truck and his dog peering from the back...

Nelson's Castle thru Sharp's Words & Eyes

The castle that bears the beloved admiral’s namesake was never visited by Horatio Nelson. Since his illegitimate children were never recognized, the estate passed to his older brother, and then nieces and nephews who were required to inhabit the castle 10 of 12 months a year in order to maintain ownership.

Here he is at death in 1805.



Born to a reverend, Horatio Nelson never walked the grounds of his Sicilian estate in Maniace - just outside of Bronte (famous for its pistachios).

After all, he was a very busy guy. Enrolled in the Navy at 12. Hard at work winning battles. Becoming a legend... And had as much drama at home as he found at sea!

His love affair with Lady Hamilton, once prostitute and then wife of British ambassador to Naples was legendary...The fact that he ended up war-wretched from his battle years with just one arm and a few teeth, Nelson was still the apple of Lady Hamilton’s eye. In fact, she and her husband and Nelson opted to share a home in England in the glare of public scrutiny rather than in secluded and sunny Sicily.

Once a confidant to the Neopolitan queen, his mistress later died penniless and drunk in France after two stints in jail for not paying her bills.



I digress....Back to the castle...Rather than tell you what we saw. I thought it might be fun to let poet William Sharp tell you in his own words. A frequent guest of the castle, he died suddenly during a visit in 1905 (exactly 100 years after Horatio's death) and is buried in the cemetery.

Come on in through these beautiful doorways...and wait til you see what's inside!



These our are family friends (now retired in Hawaii) who were frequent overnight guests of Lord Bridport at the castle in the 1960s. Look how lovely the gardens were kept!

Nelson's Castle thru Sharp's Words & Eyes

"...The great Sicilian estates of the Duchy of Bronte, which came to Lord Nelson along with the title of Duke just a hundred and four years ago, have a capital. This capital is not the mountain-town which gives the title, but the ancient castle of Maniace, standing in the hollow of a vast mountain-surrounded plateau, covered with the immemorial lavas of Etna." - Sharp



My dad really wanted to go to Nelson's castle because his friend John Caldwell, former CO of Sigonella, had fond memories of the place...as John and his family stayed there as guests during their last nite in Sicily.

Their host Rowland Artur Herbert Nelson Hood, the 4th duke of Bronte died in July 1969 just a few years after their visit. The duke and his dog Hugo are buried at the nearby cemetery, which still belongs to the Nelson family.




I can see why it may have been hard to get the Nelson family to take a concerted interest in the castle. It was primarily the ruins of an abbey and monastery -- largely destroyed in 1693's earthquake. It was a long ways away from friends and family in England. There was malaria, poverty, a tremendous lack of culture and education in the Bronte countryside, and the ever-present threat of peasant uprising.

...As a foreigner castle owner...That might be enough to keep me in my corset in frigid England.



Even ancient abbeys need defense. This area was once the site of a gruesome battle between Muslims and Christians. Note the slits in the fortress for weapons. Would that be for a bow and arrow? A crossbow? Definately not an M-16.

Nelson's Castle thru Sharp's words & eyes

Can you find the bell?

"....The bell in the great courtyard clangs, and I know that it is time to start for the long drive to Bronte, where my host has one of his ever recurrent legal cases to attend to- -for in this still only half-civilised, Mafia-ridden, brigand-haunted country the people, individually, communally, and regionally, are extraordinarily combative both in aggression and in the defence of real and imaginary wrongs..." - writes Sharp in 1903



The lava cross references Nelson's victory on the Nile. However, the castle that bears his name was not given for kicking Napolean's ass in Alexandria--it was given in thanks for his support in squelching a violent uprising in Naples and helping to restore the monarchy.

The King and Queen had fled to Palermo, along with the Britain's ambassador to Naples (and his beloved collection of Pompei relic vases, which were lost at sea and to history) and his infamous fashionista wife Lady Hamilton.

Britain said, "Shame! Shame!" to Nelson's involvement to squashing Naples longing to become a republic, and restore the throne.

Well, is that the pot calling the kettle black or what?

Nelson's Castle through Sharp's eyes & words

"...look beyond the castellated walls on to the lonely hill-pastures, and see a Daphnis of to-day "following his kine," and a Menalcas of to-day "shepherding his flock"--and one at any rate will have "a pipe with nine stops, fitted with white wax, and smoothed evenly." - excerpt from poet Sharp's travelog as he gazed from a window here at Nelson's castle.



"...And among the almonds yonder, round the first steading beyond the water-course, "the birds that cry beautifully among the thick leaves" may, if it be spring, be heard now, as in the days of Moschus' lament for Bion; or the cry of the quail or omnipresent magpie may be heard from the lentisk bushes, then as now "a plant of this land," as Theocritus wrote in his idyl of Pentheus, though then he had the Theban groves in his mind rather than these Sicilian highlands..."

Nelson's Castle thru Sharp's words & eyes

"...Or, better, I can go from my room into the great central corridor of Maniace (a museum of beautiful and interesting things, from lovely jars, antique Greek sculptures, rare Græcco-Sicilian casts, and a veritable Nelson museum of articles of all kinds besides every engraving, coloured print, and the like, associated with the great admiral)" - William Sharp 1903

Nelson's Castle thru Sharp's words & eyes

Excerpt from Poet William Sharp's travelog - "...Or I may walk to the other end of the long corridor, and through the drawingroom and music-room to the dark oak-wainscoted breakfast-room, and lean from Etna one of its windows and look at towering close by..."







This shows the original tile work and the restoration tile work.

Nelson's Castle thru Sharp's words & eyes

Two years before his death, poet William Sharp writes in his travelog from one of these windows...


"And now, as I write here, I find myself listening to three persistent sounds which reach me through the open window: though it is so still in the gardens below that I can hear the continuous indeterminate murmur of the bees in the dense borders of the large and fragrant Sicilian amaryllides, so still that the floating fumes of roses and violets, of heliotrope and the long clustered spires of medlar and lemoncina, rise undrifted by the least eddy of air, an invisible smoke of sweet odours."



While the gardens are nicely landscaped, I can only imagine how beautiful the gardens were when Sharp visited in the early 1900s.

Nelson's Castle thru Sharp's words & eyes

The excavation of an 11th century monastery and abbey at Nelson's castle.



Nearby is the Nelson family plot where a few family Nelsons rest, as well as a couple of peasants killed in wartime bombings including two brothers.

Also here lies the controversial poet William Sharp who published under 2 identities - his own and Fiona McLeod. Yeats preferred Fiona's work over Sharp's -- not sure how that all worked out since they were the same person...

Interestingly, Sharp was a member of the mystical Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, perhaps the single largest influencer of the modern-day occult. He died here suddenly at the castle on 12/12 in 1905.



Sharp's Valley of Silence

In the secret Valley of Silence
No breath doth fall;
No wind stirs in the branches;
No bird doth call:
As on a white wall
breathless lizard is still,
So silence lies on the valley
Breathlessly still.



After a stop by the cemetary, which was closed, a farmer across the street invited us in to sample his lovely grapes.

Yes to Noto!

Noto antica just outside of today's Noto shows the remains of the earthquake in the 1600s that destroyed the town.

And Noto post-earthquake is an architectural gem! And guess what? It even has a parking lot on the outskirts where a free bus with an English speaking driver will shuttle you to town center!

I'm always overjoyed when Sicily tries to help you become a more relaxed tourist (that we know we're capable of being)!

We spend most of our time touring Sicily -- just wild on espresso, white knuckled, lips pursed, eyes bulging, screaming at each other about signposts and parking spaces that seem to have fallen into the twilight zone.

Yes to Noto!