Frances Folsom

PUBLISHED IN: Magazines: Antiques and Fine Art, Hispanic Professional, Mirror, Relish, AAA Horizons, Encore, Reminisce, Heart of New Hampshire, Woodstock magazine.Newspapers: New York Post; Christian Science Monitor; Boston Herald; Cambridge Chronicle; New Hampshire Telegraph; Boston Globe; Maine Sunday Telegram; New Bedford Standard Times; Toronto Sun; New Hampshire Telegraph; the Maine Switch and others.

SPECIALTIES: New England, Canada, food, history, architecture, outdoors, soft adventure.

BOOKS: Travel Guides Written: CitySpot Palermo. Travel Guides Contributed to: CitySpot Munich 2007, and CitySpot Bologna 2007 (Thomas Cook Publishing); Reiskits Guide to Milan 2007, and Italy’s Lakes Region 2007 (Compass Maps Group); Portugal 2006 (Signpost Publishing), Madeira 2006, Independent Travellers USA, The Algarve 2006, Drive Around Washington DC 2006 (Thomas Cook Publishing).

(617) 864-0746
20 Valentine Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
» francesfolsom@comcast.net

CitySpots Palermo

by Frances Folsom, Thomas Cook Publishing

There is an Italian saying ‘The mystique of Palermo lingers with you forever’.  In a gorgeous bay underneath the hulking Monte Pellegrino and fronting the wide and fertile Conca d’Oro (Golden Shell) valley, Palermo is magnificently sited. 

This is a city of multi-layered history, starting with its founding as a Phoenician colony. It was taken by the Carthaginians in the fifth century, then came the Greeks, and in 254BC it was conquered by the Romans.  Palermo’s most glorious time came in AD831 when it was captured by the Arabs, under whose rule it blossomed as an Islamic cultural and intellectual center.  Two centuries later, under the Normans, Palermo was Europe’s greatest metropolis.

Today, Palermo is a jewel of the Mediterranean.  No visit to Sicily would be complete without a stop in Palermo, where you will come not just to know the island, but to understand it.