SANTO STEFANO DI CAMASTRA, CEFALU, CALTAVUTURO
We decided to take some time to shop for more pottery at the other town known for pottery besides Sciacca and Caltagirone. Santo Stefano di Camastra is one of the big three, known for its distinctive bold red clay pots. It is on the way to the Madonie Mountains, where we were going to check out the town of Caltavuturo. My Uncle Joe Ricotta told me that my grandfather Liberio came from there, and 100 years later we decided to check it out. So our itinerary was to take us to drive along the sea, then shop, have a seaside fish lunch while once again taking pictures of Cefalu from the beach, and then on to look for distant relatives. Just my style for a wonderful day! And it was.
The narrow old 113 along the Tyrrhenian coast is a tight fit for the trucks and buses that travel it, and it is almost as bad as the roads along the Amalfi Coast. There is a super highway in the last stages of construction that will link Palermo with Messina soon (ha!). In the meantime, leaving Patti toward Palermo, you must get off at Santa Agata Millitello and so the road winds through Santo Stefano and all of the pottery stores there. We have stopped there a few times now, last time in the winter with Jr and Jo, and we already have some of the redware, but we wanted soup/salad bowls so we could get rid of the last ugly bowls that the previous owners had left. Our plan from the beginning was to forget about matching a set of plates, but to just buy the patterns and sizes that we like. Five bowls, a wall hanging, a covered dresser storage pot, and four plates later, we are proud of the great shopping that we did. We will miss the town when the super highway finally is finished and we dont have to pass through it.
Just down the road another 17 kilometers is Cefalu, a town that I never get tired of photographing. There is a wonderful curve to the buildings and the bay that you can see from the beach, and I have photographed that curve at least six times now, in all seasons, in all kinds of light. My first pictures from our first trip in 2000 were just at twilight. This year I have caught Cefalu in the winter and spring and now summer. It is a busy beach in the summer, and the restaurants nearby serve reasonable fish meals and a decent zuppa di cozze, my favorite (mussel soup). Of course the melon is in season, so Steve had another proscuitto and melon.
Then on to climb the Madonie Mountains. This area is part of a nature reserve and the road gets very high very fast. Caltavuturo is not too far from the main highway though, so despite the twisting climb, it was easy enough to get to. We could see the Terraveccchia remains from a distance off, the old 11th century churches and towers of the old city. In the 1500s some people moved further down the southern slope of the mountain (Monte Riparato) and established the current town (Terranuova). As the history books tell, in the 1700s, the rich people also moved down and built their mansions. For example, the Palazzo Barone Pucci is beautiful and in great condition. Because we were given directions to look for the bar across from the bank, we looked ahead at this handsome building and assumed it was the bank. But we later found the bank near the elementary school a block before this building. The bank was this prefab ugly little white building!
(By the way, I had to take a shot of the statue in front of the school. Janet Jacksons problems just puzzle Italians who cannot believe American attitudes toward the human body. Half of their myriad blessed virgin pictures show Mary nursing baby Jesus with her breast and nipple totally exposed).
So after asking, we were directed to this bar owned by a Ricotta family. As we walked through the town, we could not believe the amount of public art we saw. It was much like Monte Doro that I had written about previously, only it was not artists from out of town, but locals that had left town and come back, older natives that had created these works of art.
The bar was called Sports Bar and was really as far away from a sports bar in the states as you could get. All bars in Sicily sell coffee, cappuccino, sodas, chips, and some bottled beers and mixed drinks, with a row of liquors to add to your coffee if you want café correcto. But their main purpose is for the multiple cups of espresso (in tiny cups) that Sicilians have everyday when they go to hang out somewhere. This tiny bar had that and it also had pastries. So we had Genovese, a cream filled cookie, and cappuccinos. Later we bought some biscotti.
I asked the owner if he was a Ricotta and he and his daughter asked why and I told them who I was and what I was looking for. He told me that if his father had not died recently, he would be able to talk to me more about this. He vaguely remembered his grandfather had gone to America but come back. This grandfather of mine could have been his brother, he said. But he had an uncle he could talk to, so we gave him our name and phone number and he said he would talk to the uncle and get back to us. And he gave us our cappuccinos for free. We shook hands and called each other cousin.
Its kind of neat to be understood when you do this kind of thing and they encouraged me to tell them all I could about both of my grandparents. His name is Calogero (Charles) and he said that the records that say Libero are wrong because there was no name like that. But Liborio is a name that he recognized, so it is possible officials got the name wrong, which was very common. I told him my grandmothers name and he also said that there were no Valentinos in the area, so the story that we heard about the family changing its name also must be true. I liked the town a lot. We went into a shop and Steve bought me a pair of earrings to remember it by. But having seen Caltavuturo and Valledolmo now, I wonder why my mother has such a fear of heights and tall places? Her ancestors all came from high hill towns and children are literally raised on the edges of cliffs all over Sicily.
The narrow old 113 along the Tyrrhenian coast is a tight fit for the trucks and buses that travel it, and it is almost as bad as the roads along the Amalfi Coast. There is a super highway in the last stages of construction that will link Palermo with Messina soon (ha!). In the meantime, leaving Patti toward Palermo, you must get off at Santa Agata Millitello and so the road winds through Santo Stefano and all of the pottery stores there. We have stopped there a few times now, last time in the winter with Jr and Jo, and we already have some of the redware, but we wanted soup/salad bowls so we could get rid of the last ugly bowls that the previous owners had left. Our plan from the beginning was to forget about matching a set of plates, but to just buy the patterns and sizes that we like. Five bowls, a wall hanging, a covered dresser storage pot, and four plates later, we are proud of the great shopping that we did. We will miss the town when the super highway finally is finished and we dont have to pass through it.
Just down the road another 17 kilometers is Cefalu, a town that I never get tired of photographing. There is a wonderful curve to the buildings and the bay that you can see from the beach, and I have photographed that curve at least six times now, in all seasons, in all kinds of light. My first pictures from our first trip in 2000 were just at twilight. This year I have caught Cefalu in the winter and spring and now summer. It is a busy beach in the summer, and the restaurants nearby serve reasonable fish meals and a decent zuppa di cozze, my favorite (mussel soup). Of course the melon is in season, so Steve had another proscuitto and melon.
Then on to climb the Madonie Mountains. This area is part of a nature reserve and the road gets very high very fast. Caltavuturo is not too far from the main highway though, so despite the twisting climb, it was easy enough to get to. We could see the Terraveccchia remains from a distance off, the old 11th century churches and towers of the old city. In the 1500s some people moved further down the southern slope of the mountain (Monte Riparato) and established the current town (Terranuova). As the history books tell, in the 1700s, the rich people also moved down and built their mansions. For example, the Palazzo Barone Pucci is beautiful and in great condition. Because we were given directions to look for the bar across from the bank, we looked ahead at this handsome building and assumed it was the bank. But we later found the bank near the elementary school a block before this building. The bank was this prefab ugly little white building!
(By the way, I had to take a shot of the statue in front of the school. Janet Jacksons problems just puzzle Italians who cannot believe American attitudes toward the human body. Half of their myriad blessed virgin pictures show Mary nursing baby Jesus with her breast and nipple totally exposed).
So after asking, we were directed to this bar owned by a Ricotta family. As we walked through the town, we could not believe the amount of public art we saw. It was much like Monte Doro that I had written about previously, only it was not artists from out of town, but locals that had left town and come back, older natives that had created these works of art.
The bar was called Sports Bar and was really as far away from a sports bar in the states as you could get. All bars in Sicily sell coffee, cappuccino, sodas, chips, and some bottled beers and mixed drinks, with a row of liquors to add to your coffee if you want café correcto. But their main purpose is for the multiple cups of espresso (in tiny cups) that Sicilians have everyday when they go to hang out somewhere. This tiny bar had that and it also had pastries. So we had Genovese, a cream filled cookie, and cappuccinos. Later we bought some biscotti.
I asked the owner if he was a Ricotta and he and his daughter asked why and I told them who I was and what I was looking for. He told me that if his father had not died recently, he would be able to talk to me more about this. He vaguely remembered his grandfather had gone to America but come back. This grandfather of mine could have been his brother, he said. But he had an uncle he could talk to, so we gave him our name and phone number and he said he would talk to the uncle and get back to us. And he gave us our cappuccinos for free. We shook hands and called each other cousin.
Its kind of neat to be understood when you do this kind of thing and they encouraged me to tell them all I could about both of my grandparents. His name is Calogero (Charles) and he said that the records that say Libero are wrong because there was no name like that. But Liborio is a name that he recognized, so it is possible officials got the name wrong, which was very common. I told him my grandmothers name and he also said that there were no Valentinos in the area, so the story that we heard about the family changing its name also must be true. I liked the town a lot. We went into a shop and Steve bought me a pair of earrings to remember it by. But having seen Caltavuturo and Valledolmo now, I wonder why my mother has such a fear of heights and tall places? Her ancestors all came from high hill towns and children are literally raised on the edges of cliffs all over Sicily.
posted by Sicilian Mama at 6:39 AM
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