Palermo

Palermo crowned its rebirth with Italy's largest opera house. The Teatro Massimo — inaugurated in 1897, third in size among Europe's historic houses — spreads its colonnaded portico over the city like a promise kept: closed for decades of neglect, reopened in splendour, it now anchors seasons of international rank, and cinema fixed its steps in memory with The Godfather's final tragedy. Opera is old civic property here — Alessandro Scarlatti, fountainhead of the Neapolitan school, was born in Palermo in 1660 — and the Politeama's second stage houses the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra, giving the city a double musical heart.

Behind the theatres reigns the Arab-Norman miracle: the UNESCO ensemble in which mosaic Christs blaze above muqarnas ceilings — the Cappella Palatina's golden cave, the Martorana's Byzantine dancers, the cathedral's crowned tombs, with Monreale's apocalyptic Pantocrator on the hill — the twelfth century's most tolerant synthesis, built by Norman kings with Arab engineers and Greek mosaicists.

The street completes the education: Ballarò and Capo markets roaring like souks, panelle and sfincione from the fryers, the Vucciria's nocturnal murals, Serpotta's stucco theatres hidden in oratories, the catacombs' dressed dead, and each July the Festino di Santa Rosalia surging to the sea. Golden ceilings, black markets, red curtains: Palermo performs at full voice.