L'Italo-Americano

J ust east of Paler- m o , b a r e l y t e n miles away along the Sicilian coast, s i t s B a g h e r i a , Baarìa in the local dialect, a n a m e s o m e t r a c e t o t h e Phoenicians and others to an Arabic phrase for "the gate of the wind." If you follow Page 6 news, you may have heard about it, for a reason that would have astonished its eighteenth- century founders: this June, the pop star Dua Lipa mar- ried the actor Callum Turner in one of its old aristocratic villas. Dua Lipa's Sicilian wed- ding took place at Villa Val- guarnera, a vast Baroque mansion of the early seven- t e e n t h c e n t u r y , b e f o r e a guest list of some two hun- dred names, including the likes of Elton John, who ser- e n a d e d t h e c o u p l e a t t h e piano, Donatella Versace, and Charli XCX. The bride wore the first wedding gown of Chanel's new couture line, a few days after a quieter civil ceremony back in Lon- d o n . I t w a s a t h r e e - d a y , r e p o r t e d l y $ 1 . 7 - m i l l i o n a f f a i r , a s p e c t a c l e b y a n y measure, and yet that villa is r e m e m b e r e d , i n I t a l y a t least, for something much l e s s o u t l a n d i s h t h a n a celebrity wedding: the little girl who grew up inside it long ago. We will come back to her later. The cameras came for the celebrities and then left, as c a m e r a s d o , b u t B a g h e r i a h a s b e e n d r a w i n g f a m o u s eyes for nearly three hun- d r e d y e a r s , a n d f o r f a r stranger reasons than a wed- ding. It all started in the sev- e n t e e n t h a n d e i g h t e e n t h centuries. When summer in Palermo turned unbearable, t h e S i c i l i a n a r i s t o c r a c y decamped a few miles east to this stretch of citrus groves and sea air and built them- selves country villas, each grander than the last: Villa Butera came first, in 1658, a n d t h e r e s t f o l l o w e d through the seventeen-hun- dreds, until a quiet farming district became a scattering o f B a r o q u e p a l a c e s a m o n g t h e l e m o n t r e e s , m o r e t h a n a d o z e n i n a l l , and grand enough to become a s t o p o n t h e G r a n d Tour. Several still stand, a little weathered, hemmed in now by the ordinary apart- ment blocks of a busy mod- ern town, which is part of what makes coming upon them feel so strange. The most peculiar villa is by far is Villa Palagonia, begun in 1715 and known to everyone simply as the villa dei mostri, the villa of mon- sters, named for the crowd of grotesque stone figures, from dwarfs and dragons to d e f o r m e d m u s i c i a n s a n d gentlemen with the faces of beasts, that a later prince, F r a n c e s c o F e r d i n a n d o Gravina, set along its walls a n d g a t e p o s t s f r o m 1 7 4 9 onward, to the delight and the unease of every traveler who passed. One of those travelers was Goethe, who came in 1787 and left thor- o u g h l y u n s e t t l e d , f i l l i n g pages of his Italian Journey with these deformed crea- tures; in fact, the procession o f f i g u r e s h e s a w h e r e i s often said to have inspired the witches' sabbath, the W a l p u r g i s N i g h t , o f h i s Faust. Few small Sicilian t o w n s c a n s a y t h e y w a n - d e r e d i n t o t h e g r e a t e s t poem in the German lan- guage, but Bagheria can. A n o t h e r o f t h e v i l l a s , V i l l a C a t t o l i c a , holds a treasure of a different kind, because Bagheria is also the birthplace of Renato Gut- tuso, born here in 1911, a c o m m i t t e d r e a l i s t w h o s e paintings are full of Sicilian light and Sicilian life: he gave us, among others, La Vucciria, the teeming Paler- mo market rendered in col- ors you can almost smell. Guttuso left his birthplace a great deal of his work and now lies buried in its gar- d e n , i n a s t a r t l i n g b l u e sculpted tomb that faces the sea. The house is his muse- u m t o d a y , a n d i t k e e p s , among much else, pieces by yet another son of Bagheria, the one who would carry the town's name into cinemas around the world. T h a t s o n i s G i u s e p p e Tornatore, born here in 1956, who won an Oscar for Cinema Paradiso, his ten- der hymn to a Sicilian vil- lage and its little picture h o u s e . I n 2 0 0 9 , h e w e n t further and made Baarìa, a n e p i c s t r e t c h e d a c r o s s most of the twentieth centu- ry and named for his home- town in dialect. Interesting- ly, in one of those ironies Italy seems to specialize in, he had to rebuild the Baghe- ria of his childhood on a set in Tunisia, the real one hav- ing changed beyond recog- n i t i o n , s w a l l o w e d b y t h e same modern sprawl that now crowds its villas. The t o w n h e l o v e d e n o u g h t o immortalize was, by then, already half a memory. A n d h e r e , a t l a s t , w e c o m e b a c k t o V i l l a V a l - g u a r n e r a , b e c a u s e l o n g before it hosted a pop star's wedding it was the child- h o o d h o m e o f t h e w r i t e r D a c i a M a r a i n i , w h o arrived there as a girl after the war – after her family's harrowing years in a Japan- ese internment camp – and who, decades later, gave one of her most personal books the bare title Bagheria, a clear-eyed look at the place, at its beauty and its decay, its light and its old wounds. That knack may, in the e n d , b e t h e t r u e s t t h i n g about the town, because for a l l t h e r e c e n t h e a d l i n e s , Bagheria is not a polished resort but still a real and c r o w d e d S i c i l i a n p l a c e , w h e r e B a r o q u e m a r v e l s stand shoulder to shoulder with apartment blocks, and the past keeps pressing up against the present. Yet, it still keeps its lemon light and sea salt scents, its vivid colors and history. This is Bagheria's real gift to its visitors, more real than the glitz of a celebrity wedding a n d t h e e p h e m e r a l r e l e - vance it may have given to the town for a few days: the assurance that beauty and ordinary life, art and memo- ry, have been keeping com- pany here for a very long t i m e , a n d m e a n t o g o o n doing so. FRANCESCA BEZZONE Bagheria: villas, monsters, and a pop star's wedding THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 16 L'Italo-Americano Aspra, the seaside district of Bagheria, has long been known for its fishing tradition and colorful wooden boats. Today it remains one of the town's liveliest cor- ners, combining a working harbor with seaside restaurants and views of the Tyrrhenian coast (Photo: Andose24/Dreamstime) ALL AROUND ITALY TRAVEL TIPS DESTINATIONS ACTIVITIES

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