Beauty, Decadence, and Chocolate: This Is the Most Elegant Way to Tour Sicily Inline

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    Photo: Hamish Bowles
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    Ettore De Maria Bergler’s amazing 1899 murals at the Villa Igiea in Palermo, the Art Nouveau masterpiece of architect Ernesto Basile.

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    Photo: Hamish Bowles
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    The 12th-century Byzantine mosaic of Christ above the altar at the cathedral of Monreale.

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    Photo: Hamish Bowles
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    A detail of a marble column decorated with mosaic in a cloister of Monreale Cathedral gives a clue to the technique.

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    Photo: Cristian Albu
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    Yours truly in the aboveground roots of the Moreton Bay fig (ficus macrophylla) in the Palermo Botanical Gardens.

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    Photo: Hamish Bowles
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    The ceiling treatment in the queen’s Turkish salon under the eaves of the 1799 Palazzina Cinese in Palermo, decorated—with amazing wit and brilliance—by Giuseppe Patania and Vincenzo Riolo.