Beautiful, bedevilled island

The Arabs invaded Sicily in the ninth century, leaving behind mosques and pink-domed cupolas. In the Sicilian capital of Palermo, Arab rule was generally tolerant, its dolce far niente evocative of sultans, minarets, concubines and other jasmine-scented delights. Walking round Palermo today, however, one is assailed by less lovely smells. Parts of the city remain unreconstructed since the Allies bombed it in 1943: fire-blackened palazzi and rubble-strewn slumlands speak of the Mafia’s systematic ransacking of the public coffers. A still darker side of Palermo finds expression in the 19th-century catacombs of the Capuchin friary, situated near the Arab-Fatamid pleasure palace of La Zisa (‘the magnificent’). Some 8,000 embalmed corpses moulder in the catacombs; segregated according to lawyers, surgeons, university professors, there is even a section for babies and virgins. The Capuchin priests in their coffee-brown robes appear to be the best preserved. (Cappuccino gets its name from the colour of the order’s habit; personally I can’t bear the froth.