Sicily: A Cultural History

Long before it became an Italian offshore island, Sicily was the land in the center of the Mediterranean where the great civilizations of Europe and Northern Africa met. In ancient times it was the scene of conflicts between Carthaginians, Greeks and Romans and there are still more, better preserved Greek temples in Sicily than in the whole of mainland Greece. An Arab invasion in 827 made Sicily home to an Islamic culture, and through Sicily the Arabs introduced to Europe a range of products from sugar to pasta. Other conquering forces included the Catalan-Aragonese, the Spanish, the French, the Austrians and even the British who invented Marsala wine._x000D_

_x000D_

Sicily today is familiar and unfamiliar, modernized and unchanging. Visitors will find in an out-of-the-way town an Aragonese castle, will stumble across a Norman church by the side of a lesser traveled road, will see red Muslim-styles domes over a Christian shrine, will find a Baroque church of breathtaking beauty in a village, will catch a glim