An action packed six days validates the charms of "my England" with some special 20-somethings

I confess that I am not, and have never been, one of those women who goes all gooey-eyed over babies. I’m happy to do a little dandle, spout some praise and hand them back to a parent. Toddlers can be a bit amusing in small doses, but frankly I’m delighted to live in a country where the tradition is to give the children their “tea” and put them to bed early, so the adults can enjoy a proper dinner. Kids, for me, don’t start to get interesting until they develop personalities and can start having conversations. Even simple ones.

I love children most, however, when the ones you’ve watched grow up flower into exciting young adults. I will spare naming any of them here, as it would no doubt be mortifying and kill their social cred. I just had a magnificent visit, however, from a 24-year-old nephew that was one of the highlights of my year. Mixing in two kids who also call me “auntie” to celebrate Thanksgiving made things even better.

I was a bit worried about arranging an itinerary that would “work” for a 20-something American, but I needn’t have worried. The family’s love of food, cultural literacy and hunger for new experiences has descended seamlessly to a new generation. Selfishly, I wanted to put on six days that were so magnificent he’d my advocate in convincing the whole family to come back. And, of course, I wanted to give him a proper taste of my England. Not the London tourist round, but an idea of what my life here is really like.

Here’s what we got up to.

Fresh from Heathrow, it was off to Italian Continental Stores in Maidenhead. The kid is not only a foodie, but almost entirely of Italian descent (Sicilian from our side, Genoese from his mother’s), so he was curious to see what an authentic Italian store looked like in the UK. We had a blast, and managed to be relatively moderate in our purchases … though he’d wolfed down several cannoli (snack sized) before we got home. Giving in to jet lag on Day One is never a good idea, so we dumped the groceries and headed over to my local stately home, The Vyne, which had just opened for Christmas.

We hadn’t managed to incorporate the country house experience into his family’s last visit … the agenda was too driven by London and his WW2 obsessed father … so this was his first taste of what I consider to be the ultimate expression of English identity. Take a deep respect for tradition and heritage, build a house based on the best foreign styles, fill it with centuries of collectibles brought home from trips to Europe and further afield, surround it with lavish gardens and a landscape that looks like it came out of a Claude Lorraine painting, et voila! Almost every element comes from somewhere else, but the mixture that emerges is uniquely English. The Vyne had a fun Alice in Wonderland theme, which was amusing, but the house even without its Christmas Decorations was more than enough to keep him awake.

Dinner almost wasn’t. We pushed on to an early table at The Leather Bottle in Mattingley, currently the best gastropub in our area. After three decades in this country it’s easy to forget how alien the whole concept of the pub is to Americans. He was delighted, despite barely being able to keep his eyes open, and found the presence of venison on the menu to be wildly exotic. (He loved it.)

Day Two continued the English countryside theme with a Hawk Walk around Chawton House’s grounds. This is the fifth walk I’ve done with local falconer Anita, four with hawks and one with a barn owl, and the experience has become my top recommendation for visitors wanting to do something really special in the countryside. The hawks are as majestic as you’d expect a flying predator to be but, thanks to the motivation of food, are also as steadfast a companion on a walk as a golden retriever. Anita puts the glove on you, instructs you in how to hold your arm to become the perfect perch, then lays bits of food on your thumb at intervals across a walk of about a mile. Meanwhile, she educates her clients on hawks, while I could fill my nephew in on the history of Chawton (where I work as a volunteer).

That evening it was off to Salisbury, where the town website claimed their Christmas market would be open. It wasn’t. But the kid got to take in the charms of the historic town centre and marvel at the outside of the cathedral before we settled in to some mulled wine at The Haunch of Venison, one of the city’s most picturesque and historic pubs. We tried a Ghurka and Indian restaurant on the way home. Gurkha Kitchen was deeply average but across the street from the train station, so made up for the food with convenience. (It was the coldest night of the year thus far; we didn’t want to be hanging out on train platforms.)

The kid had earned a lie-in by Day Three, which was going to be heavily about food prep in advance of our “Thanksgiving” dinner the next night. He slept through the pecan pie making but joined me for an introduction to Danish pastry.

That evening, the other 20-somethings arrived and we rolled into a “make your own pizza” night, firing up the pizza oven that slides inside our gas grill. I had suspected that these three, all so special to me but who hadn’t met, would get along famously. They did. So much so that the French nephew (adopted) had made plans to visit the American nephew (official) before the weekend ended.

The next day, though it was the Saturday before the actual American Thanksgiving, was our observation of the holiday. It started in traditional style, with the whole family in the kitchen eating breakfast (the pastry we’d made the day before) and doing meal prep. I’d promised to teach the adoptive niece how to make ravioli and the whole team joined in.

Later in the day we left the kitchen to Mr. Bencard and drove down to Winchester’s renown Christmas market. The weather was vile, however, pelting us with rain and sending gusts to blow umbrellas inside out. The American kid was seeing the dark side of life in England. The trials of our hike made Thanksgiving dinner even better.

I’d wanted to capture the traditional flavours of the holiday meal but not do “the usual”, as my nephew would be sitting down to that menu five days later. We started with pumpkin ravioli in a chestnut cream sauce. (Excellent, but a bit big for a starter. I’d make them as tortellini next time.) The turkey showed up as a breast made into a Wellington, cranberry and sausage stuffing replacing the usual Wellington duxelles. Sides were creamed corn and Brussels sprouts. Pecan pie finished us off, elevated by a dollop of mascarpone flavoured with crystallised ginger, freshly-ground nutmeg and cinnamon. This was such a triumph I doubt I’ll ever do plain old cream or ice cream again.

In America, Thanksgiving is synonymous with football. Our version of the holiday went with rugby. The Autumn Internationals had been the foundation for the nephew’s whole visit. He’s played American football at serious levels since he was a small child, but now that his regular playing days are over I’ve been trying to get him interested in rugby. Those seeds have been germinating. He wanted to see a game live. We were able to get extra tickets to England v. Japan at Twickenham. Both the American and the French nephew loved it, while the husband enjoyed serving as rugby educator.

On the last day of the American’s visit we hit London hard for Christmas shopping and lights before theatre. It delights me that London, which was such an underwhelming destination for my first holiday season here in the mid-’90s, has upped its game so seriously that people now fly in from around Europe to take in the decorations. We did Piccadilly and Regent Street, both before and after dark to appreciate the flying guardian angels. We regressed to childhood wandering through Hamleys, ogled overpriced goods and dancing pine cones in Fortnum and Mason and appreciated Harrod’s full frontal lighting design. I introduced the kid to Cordings and was delighted to see his appreciation for classic country gentlemen’s wear. Bond Street after dark is probably the prettiest in London, while Annabel’s on Berkeley Square deserves a special trip. (It’s a great display but, as a member of a club just a few doors down, I’d be furious if my dues got spent on something so frivolous. They obviously have a different financial model.) We avoided Winter Wonderland and its entrance fee, but got a bit of Christmas Market magic in Leicester Square. Hit Italian foodie roots enjoyed a stop at Bar Italia and proclaimed it the best coffee he’d had in a while.

We finished our evening at a box hanging over the stage at the Victoria Palace for Hamilton. His first time. My third. It remains a wonder of music, drama and dance, and the box was a revelation. Discounted because you lose the back corner of the stage from your line of sight, the reality is that you only miss two or three quick things but save £40 a ticket from seats equally close. And there’s something special about that private box looking down at the whole theatre. I highly recommend it.

I was quite proud of the pace I maintained when hosting 20-somethings. And of the fact that we had a great time despite a four-decade age gap. But the harsh reality was that I fell over with exhaustion after dropping the kid at Heathrow from six high-impact days. I retuned home and collapsed onto the sofa. But not for long. There was a flight to Milan in my near future.

A cultural gold mine beckons in London this Christmas: Here’s my pick of the exhibitions

London always lays on a banquet of cultural offerings in the autumn, timed to grab not only late season tourists but locals looking for activities over half-term and Christmas breaks. This year I’ve taken in even more than usual, thanks to a combination of unemployment, gift memberships and exhibitions being a great space to catch up and network with former colleagues. Here’s a roundup of cultural highlights you may want to work into your Christmas plans, in my order of enjoyment.

The Great Mughals: Art, Architecture and Opulence
at the Victoria and Albert Museum through 5 May 2025
This is a lush treasure trove of spectacularly beautiful objects. You could spend hours here diving into the politics, craftsmanship and social trends of the glory days of the Mughals. The time period covered is roughly 1560-1660, with art coming from northern India, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and other bits of the Middle East. You can also happily ignore all the context, simply wandering around and filling your eyes with glory. All of the giddy fantasies of The Arabian Nights are here.

The Mughals loved intricate craftsmanship. You’ll know their greatest hit, the Taj Mahal. These rooms show how that was just the tip of the decorative iceberg. From clothing to rugs, documents to furniture, cooking pots to ceramics … you get the feeling that the Mughal court couldn’t tolerate anything being simple or plain. The most stellar objects are small enough that I regretted not having reading glasses. Opulent jewellery featuring blazes of finely-set gems and bright enamel work. Weapons with animals and flowers forming their hilts. Drinking cups and tiny boxes that were probably worth more … and took longer to make … that the average citizen’s home.

Thankfully I’m now a V&A member, because this is a show I will want to return to several times.

Medieval Women: In Their Own Words
at the British Library through 2 March
I rarely get to the British Library; it’s just that little bit too far north to be on the “flight path” for anything I usually do. But I had a rare meeting in this part of town and thought I’d drop in. I found an exhibition worth going out of your way for.

The curators tap into their vast collection to bring historic women to life, from grand noblewomen and famous figures like Hildegard of Bingen to wives, mothers, merchants and craftswomen leading ordinary lives. What’s so thrilling is just how fascinating those ordinary lives are, and how vivid the voices are that come down the centuries.

We meet Trota of Salerno, a medic offering well-informed, practical advice on women’s health from the then-cosmopolitan courts of Southern Italy. Christine de Pizan stands out as the first professional female author in Europe. A fascinating “birth girdle” … essentially a belt inscribed with charms and prayers to wrap around the pregnant woman’s stomach … brings home the extreme danger of childbirth. Ippolita Maria Sforza argues forcefully for female education. Gwerful Mechain writes satirical poetry in Welsh about women’s vaginas, suggesting that it’s what men are really talking about in their poetry so she’s just getting to the point. We meet the first female printer in Europe, Estellina Conat, and the savvy banker Licoricia of Winchester, both of whom achieved success despite the double drawbacks of being female and Jewish.

Though there are a lot of texts here, as you’d expect from a library-sponsored exhibition, the show brings the Middle Ages to life with gorgeous illuminated manuscripts, a handful of complementary artefacts, atmospheric background music, short films from experts and really attractive set design. This was my biggest pleasant surprise of the autumn.

Barbie: The Exhibition
at the Design Museum through 23 February 2025

Barbie would have been just as surprising as the British Library show, had I not read some rave reviews in advance. The exhibition is a long, bubbly bath in sweet nostalgia for anyone who played with Barbie dolls as a child. It goes much deeper, however, revealing Mattel’s decades-long prowess in design and marketing.

The show starts with the creation of the iconic doll, pointing out that while her lithe form can earn feminist ire today she was meant to be a star of their movement. In a world where dolls were almost entirely babies, giving little girls a chance to practice motherhood, Barbie let their imaginations soar to new possibilities. (I think the Barbie Tikki Bar may have had a disproportionate influence on my own life.) A procession of Barbies through the years shows not only how in-tune the dolls were with the times, but how adept the company has been at shifting facial features and skin tones to include new markets. They were doing diversity before most corporate diversity trainers were born.

We think of tie-ups between seemingly unrelated companies as a modern phenomenon, but Barbie has been doing it for decades. The fashion designers who’ve had a go at dressing her are impressive, and so are all the consumer brands that have placed themselves in her life. The room full of accessories is a blast, showing the evolution of Barbie’s houses, cars, lifestyle and travel. Pure fun, with a few solid marketing lessons slipped in.

Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael: Florence c. 1504

at the Royal Academy of Arts through February 2025 

A serious exhibition for hard-core fans, marred by the RA letting too many people at once into a show that mostly requires you to get close to drawings on paper. As with the Mughals, I was kicking myself for not bringing reading glasses. The rivalry between the three Renaissance artists is familiar territory and I found nothing particularly new here. (Unlike the British Museum’s Michelangelo: The Last Decades earlier this year that revealed fascinating elements to the artist’s spirituality and closest friendships.)

The most striking part of this show is being able to compare Michelangelo’s preparatory drawings to the circular relief he sculpted from them, here shown just a few feet away. The only Michelangelo sculpture in the UK, this “tondo” is already part of the Royal Academy’s collection so nothing particularly new. The main point of the exhibition is to show the way the three men influenced each other, demonstrated through their drawings. Interesting, though I suspect all but the most dedicated art history nerds will be more entertained, while learning just as much, but watching the three-part Renaissance: The Blood and The Beauty currently on BBC iPlayer. Exact same topic, but with Charles Dance doing a compelling turn as Michelangelo. If you do come see the exhibition, watch the BBC series first to make it more relevant.

Naomi in Fashion
at the Victoria and Albert through 6 April 2025
One of the glories of museum membership is getting to poke your head into exhibitions you wouldn’t choose to pay for. Which is how I ended up flitting through this impressive collection of haute couture that supermodel Naomi Campbell has shown off on the catwalk. While popular culture isn’t my thing, and I’ve never been the size or had the money to bother with high fashion, I can’t deny that many of the dresses in here are proper works of art. There’s a peacock feather gown that’s as beautiful as anything in the Mughal exhibition, and a golden, beaded wonder that looks too fine for human consumption … more appropriate for an Elven queen in Lord of the Rings. The curators have done a clever interactive bit in the centre of the exhibition space, inviting visitors to try and get evaluated on a catwalk strut. A gaggle of teenage girls were having the time of their lives.

Silk Roads
at the British Museum through 23 February 2025

I really wanted to like this exhibition. Sadly, it left me a bit cold. The premise is a good one, though hardly original: the trading routes for luxury goods that have been operating since ancient times have cross-fertilised cultures at the same time they exchanged goods. It’s a bit of an art historical validation for the global economy. Look at what lovely things we make when we all influence each other.

Thus you get a global potpourri of stuff, from Buddhas and Chinese pottery to Viking silver and the decorative accessories of the Ancient Rus. The items on display are attractive but there are no jaw-droppers that make this a must-see. And while the concept of cross-pollination was a good one there was only one “ah ha” moment for me in the whole show; A Hindu god sculpted with Ancient Greek musculature really drove the mash up message home. Overall, I was missing a story to tie it all together. Remembering how the same museum had brought its Roman Legion show together through the story of one soldier, I thought they really missed a trick not introducing us to one or more traders who could have brought these routes to life.

Welford Park’s Spectacle of Light brings some welcome fire to those lengthening nights

Country houses and gardens across Britain have embraced holiday illuminations as a way of boosting December footfall. There are at least a dozen valid options within an easy drive of our house. The really well-known ones, like Kew and Wisley, require serious advance planning to avoid their regular sell-outs. It’s a stroke of genius, therefore, that Welford Park decided to light up their grounds for the autumn half term instead, pulling in crowds the week around Halloween.

Still very much a family home, this Georgian pile north of Newbury isn’t regularly open to the public. If it  looks familiar, it’s because its lawns have hosted the Great British Bake Off for years. Locals know it best for its snowdrop trail, considered to be one of the best in the country.

Welford’s “Spectacle of Light” follows the same paths galanthophiles take in late January and February, though the autumn event is a lot showier. Instead of quiet stretches of white and green flowers in a winter forest you have lights of every hue. They blink, glow, dance and strobe. Some work in silence, others move to dramatic soundtracks.

It’s magnificent, and well worth the £25 per adult and £14 per child to get in.

The trail runs over about a mile, taking four big “S” curves to bring you from the estate’s main gate to the climax in front of the house itself. There’s a long procession under an avenue of gracious trees, leaves yet to drop for winter, with pink trunks and blue and green tops, like something out of Tolkien. 

Another avenue is Oriental-inspired, with red lanterns, tori gates and dragons. There are foliage tunnels cast into wild, abstract shapes by vivid uplighters. In a forest of slender saplings strips of light on each trunk change colour and dance to a dramatic symphony.

Further along, the soundtrack from Inception accompanies an avenue of half circles of light that fade in and out with different colours to the music. 

There’s a dramatic field of flame that shines next to a riverbed, calling to mind the campfires of a huge army the night before battle. Lights on the water that runs through the estate play further with pattern and movement. Solid-coloured lights bring the surrounding hills into focus, occasionally catching a perplexed cow wondering at the scene.

The trail ends in front of the house. Searchlights go up into the night sky while a projection of roses dances across the facade. The huge lawn in front features an installation of scores of illuminated pyramids with their tops cut off. (Bonus points to any reader who knows that this shape is a called a frustum.) Each is lit from within. They changed colour in time to tunes that sound distinctly Bollywood. Reminding you that it’s not just Halloween time, but Diwali.

Organisers have cleverly ended the trail with a food court to one side, so you can grab dinner from one of the stalls, set yourself up at a table and watch the frustums flash.

Welford Park’s timing is brilliant. By Christmas, we’re often stuck in a cycle of heavy rains and bitter winds with temperatures just above freezing. Late October is usually much more pleasant, often temperate. Foliage is still hanging on. The experience is both more comfortable, and more magical. And since few people bother to do anything specifically Christmas-themed with their lights, here’s no reason these events can’t work at any time throughout the winter to brighten our long, dark nights. I’d love to see more people follow Welford’s lead to fill winter nights outside of the obvious Christmas calendar.

Picturesque but a bit boring, my German family's home region surprisingly pleasant

After two highly indulgent trips to Italy, taken practically back-to-back, my wisest strategy would have been some quiet time at home, avoiding carbohydrates, alcohol and discretionary spending. But life doesn’t always support prudent decisions. Four days after my return from Sicily I was back at Heathrow. This time, however, I was heading to Germany.

For years, my father and I have been talking about going to the village from which our ancestor left for America in the mid-1800s. We’d visited the origin point of the Swiss side, the Wallemanns, outside of Lucern. But getting to the German homelands had been lingering on the to do list for a while. Probably because, from a sightseeing perspective, this bit of Hesse … about an hour north of Frankfurt … seems to have little appeal for tourism. My Dad is 86, however, and though he’s healthy and active I thought I’d better stop taking time for granted. We needed to complete the genealogical quest while we both had the ability to do so.

My expectations were low. So Imagine my surprise when I discovered a region of half-timbered villages like sets from a fairy tale, attractive rolling countryside and picturesque castles. There were few other tourists and those we encountered were mostly German. They’re obviously keeping this part of the country to themselves.

Whalen is a tiny farming community which I suspect hasn’t changed much since my great-, great-grandfather Martin Scherstuhl left. There are no shops, offices or services. The only businesses are agricultural, a pig farm being the only one to bother with much signage. The barns here haven’t been turned into posh homes or holiday lets; they’re full of tractors and agricultural supplies. The architecture is split roughly half and half between 20th century housing and much older half-timbered farm houses. A few were freshly renovated but most are well-loved and well-used. At the highest ground in the village sits a red sandstone church with a plaque over the door that read 1780, but walls that looked older. It only opened for Sunday services, so we didn’t get inside, but we found the family name on a memorial next to the front door. It told us that a descendent of the brother Martin left behind had died in the Franco-Prussian war.

Over in the village cemetery, located on the edge of town rather than next to the church, we found that another Scherstuhl made the ultimate sacrifice in the opening months of WW1. The American side was luckier. Martin fought through the Civil War on the Union side, survived, and none of his descendants saw combat after. Despite the sacrifices of the German Scherstuhls the family survives in the village. Thanks to the magic of Google Translate we “talked” to two locals who pointed out their house, and the grave of cousins from my grandparents’ generation who’d helped another American cousin trace the line back to the first Scherstuhl in Wahlen in the 17th century.

With no ability to speak German on our side, and no common ancestor since the early 1800s, we thought we’d skip knocking on the modern Scherstuhl door and instead did a wandering road trip through nearby villages that were home to some of the women that the family tree told us had married into the family. They were all the same: small, quiet, attractive clusters of farm houses around a church, communities entirely dedicated to agriculture. Any modern young person with a desire for excitement would leave quickly, and I suspect that’s what drove Martin to American adventure all those years ago.

Thankfully, we did not follow my instinct to stay in the closest accommodation to Whalen. Kirtorf was big enough to have a small inn, but little else. We opted instead for the major town in the area, Alsfeld. This was about 15 miles away from Wahlen and would have been where villagers came when they needed to do any significant legal transactions or business deals. Though there’s no documentary evidence of it, we can be fairly sure our ancestors walked these streets.

And what picturesque streets they are.

Two years ago I patiently endured 90 minutes each way on a bus from our Rhine cruise just to get to the tourist hot spot of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, joining thousands of other tourists to appreciate its much-publicised glories. Alsfeld is just as attractive, and there’s almost nobody here. Many times across the long weekend dad and I found ourselves strolling almost alone down the cobbled streets, quietly appreciating their remarkable beauty.

Alsfeld has one of the largest collections of 16th century half-timbered housing in Germany. In modern times the town and its residents have invested heavily in restoring and preserving their heritage, so much of it is in pristine shape. We stumbled upon a few places in mid-restoration, wreathed in scaffolding and propped up by iron skeletons. It was obvious what an enormous job renovation of one of these old beauties would be.

Though the ring of medieval city walls is gone, their outline is still clear, and once you cross into their circle it’s like stepping back 400 years.

There’s no uniformity to the half-timbering; creative builders seemed to treat each facade as a fresh design opportunity. The patchwork of dark wood criss-crossing pale plaster beneath steeply-gabled roofs offers plenty to delight the eyes. But there’s much more. The original owners of these houses had their names, occupations, favourite phrases or bible verses carved across beams separating the ground and first floors; still lovingly picked out in white paint all these years later. Architecture always comments on the history of a place; rarely is it so obvious. Some buildings have patterns incised into their plaster panels, then picked out in contrasting dark paint. Usually flowers or animals, these are proper works of art. On many corners, vertical beams stretching multiple floors are carved with fanciful guardian figures picked out in bright colours. There are knights, angels and proud beasts both real and mythical.

A few of the grander buildings feature support brackets for protruding floors writhing with more carved guardian figures and foliage. Just a week before I’d been in Sicily’s Val di Noto, famous for the exuberant carvings supporting the region’s balconies. I realised I was looking at exactly the same architectural flourishes here, in a remarkably similar style from roughly the same time period. It’s just that in the north the fantasy was realised in wood, while 1,300 miles south they carved from stone.

Hessian and Sicilian blood didn’t mix in my veins until the 1960s, but artistically they were cross-fertilising long before.

Alsfeld’s market square is the climax of its decorative abundance, with some of the tallest buildings and the most flamboyant carving. There’s an impressive stone market building with a covered loggia on the ground floor. The cathedral next door might be Lutheran, but the town’s artistic sensibilities were never going to allow a stripped back, plain space for worship. The interior features more fabulous carving and a cycle of vivid paintings, including a host of Protestant founding fathers who manage to look both stern and a bit festive thanks to the artists’ bright colour scheme. Visiting at the height of the autumn harvest, we were lucky to find the altar dressed with the abundance of the surrounding farms.

There’s a tiny local museum, free to enter, that has a handful of historic artefacts displayed across two floors. The most troubling time in the town’s history is confronted directly here: Alsfeld is so cute, so quintessentially German, that Hitler named it a model town. His opinion was confirmed when the town was proudly ahead of its neighbours proclaiming itself free of Jews. (Heartbreaking museum displays show remnants of the extinct community.) The height of Alsfeld tourism was during WW2, when the Nazis used to run bus tours into town to show off what a good Aryan community should look like. I suspect that legacy may be why Alsfeld has been a bit slower than Rothenburg at angling for modern tourists.

There was also a cute Brothers Grimm fairy tale house, but it was never open in the days we walked by. Tourists mostly seem to come to the market square, shop on the streets around it, and eat at the Restaurant Kartoffelsack.

The “potato sack” had a menu entirely built around the humble spud. If you think Italy is carb heavy, you will see it as a land of light dishes and vegetables after a few meals in Hesse. This is comfort food taken to rib-sticking extremes. Dad had cheesy potato gnocchi while I opted for spaetzle baked with cheese and friend onions. It came with a delicious salad, thank God, to ease the guilt of everything else. There’s also a local wine list here worthy of exploration, though the two glasses I tried were a bit sweet for my taste.

We stayed just outside the old walled centre at Hotel Zum Schwalbennest (the swallow’s nest). Between the town itself and online photos of a building that looked a bit like a German mountain retreat, we were expecting something with old world charm. We were amused to instead find Route 66 theming and decor that appealed to German Harley Davidson fans who ride this route on weekends. The rooms are functional, almost like a university dorm, but comfortable and reasonably priced. Few on staff spoke English but they were tremendously genial and took good care of the odd English-speaking tourists. Their restaurant also serves up some brilliant traditional food, with a whole double-page spread of the menu dedicated to variations on schnitzel. So while it lacked the historic charm of the town centre, its other attributes and its convenient location made it a perfect base for us.

There’s not a great deal to do in Alsfeld beyond wandering around to appreciate the architecture, so we were looking for something else to divert us on our fourth and last day in the region. I found a medieval festival at Ronneburg Castle, on our way back to the airport, to entertain us.

Ronneburg is an impressive pastiche of historic buildings on a hilltop to the east of Frankfurt. Medieval foundations now support 17th-century buildings restored at the hands of 19th century romanticists. Lots of floral wall paintings, dark wood furniture and antlers. Climbing the central tower is the equivalent of scaling an eight-story building, but if you make it … which my age-defying father proudly did … the views from the top are beautiful. As a historic attraction i wouldn’t go out of my way for it, but if you’re in the area it’s worth a nose around. Particularly if you eat in their restaurant, a grand hall where they serve more traditional, rib-sticking cuisine.

If the medieval festival is on, however, there’s a whole additional layer of fun to be had. Two stages with entertainment, loads of people in costume and lots of interesting craft booths. I’ve been to plenty of historical fairs in my time. While most of what was on offer here was consistent with what you’d find in England, there were a few curious discrepancies.

The food was oddly disappointing. I was expecting a variety of German specialties and a lot of sausage. There wasn’t a single German sausage booth of the kind that turns up at every English event. The closest they came was a guy selling gourmet venison sausages. Meat and some sort of sweet bread on skewers seemed to be everyone’s go-to dish.

While people who choose to dress up at English medieval fairs tend to be resolutely faithful to our home-grown traditions, the Germans spread their horizons further. On the edge of the encampment for the reenactors who were here for the whole weekend we found a Turkish bazaar, complete with a hot tub in which you could strip off and soothe your fair-weary bones. There was a disproportionate number of Scottish highlanders, both as costumed attendees and as the vendors in several tartan-draped booths. They all sounded like native Germans, however. I was unable to solve the mystery of whether people here just really love Outlander, or whether there’s some long-naturalised community of Scottish immigrants here who celebrate their heritage at the festival.

Most notably, in comparison with an English event, there was no fighting. Any medieval festival in the UK is built around jousting, or hand-to-hand combat of armoured knights. Both, if you’re lucky. There was little armour at Ronneburg, and nobody wearing it got into a ring to bash anyone else. Yet another legacy of WW2? I’ll never know without befriending a local.

Maybe I should look up those distant Scherstuhl cousins back in Wahlen. For now, it remains a mystery. The bigger question, however, of where the Swiss and German sides of my family came from has now been fully answered. In both cases, ambitious young men left fairly comfortable lives in generally prosperous but extremely unexciting places to seek adventure in a new world. Four generations later, it’s been great fun to see where their stories started.

Palermo’s Teatro Massimo is an ideal place to see opera on a grand scale, at modest prices

Opera is a global art form, with more than 1,000 major companies around the world and grand opera houses scattered across every continent but Antarctica. These days the lead singers are as likely to be from Africa or China as Europe. Italy, however, still has quite a proprietary relationship with opera.

It was invented here, after all, and many of the favourites in the repertoire are sung in Italian. Italians feel a sense of ownership when it comes to the most popular arias; my grandfather used to belt out Puccini like other people did pop songs. Even small towns in Italy have opera houses. In the cities, they’re usually an architectural centrepiece, on par with … and often next to … palaces. The biggest of them all is in Palermo.

The Teatro Massimo is the largest opera house in Italy, and the third largest in Europe after Paris and Vienna. When it opened in the 1890s it was intended to hold up to 3,000 people in its seven tiers and ground floor. Despite the cavernous proportions, it’s reckoned to have perfect acoustics. These days a desire for more personal space and fire safety has reduced audience size to just 1,381. That’s 875 fewer than London’s Royal Opera house.

The smaller audience lets you luxuriate in more elbow room, and the company here still puts on productions on a traditionally grand scale. Yet tickets at Teatro Massimo are far cheaper than in London. We splurged on £120 a ticket for amazing seats in the stalls (the ground floor of the auditorium). We were on the horizontal aisle that divided the front and back blocks of seating, so had no heads in front of us for 10 feet and the ability to stretch our legs full length during the production. Instead of your typical flip-bottom theatrical seating, the stalls are all individual bucket-shaped arm chairs in classic style with generous upholstery. I’ve never been more comfortable, and rarely had a better view, in an opera house. The same location in London would cost more than £250, and in our recent experience any seats cheaper than £170 put your so high up, or give you such restricted sightlines, they’re not worth buying. At Teatro Massimo, had we wanted to spend less, I could have bought seats with clear views in the lower tiers for £60.

It’s the escalating price of London tickets, paired with the increasingly streamlined sets and choruses there, that has us looking to the continent for more of our opera experiences. The Teatro Massimo didn’t disappoint. In addition to those comfy, excellent value seats we got an excellent production of Turandot. None of those modern, cost-slashing stagings here. We were served up architecturally impressive sets, dazzling costumes and a full chorus.

Admittedly, I was somewhat perplexed by the set design. Turandot is set in Ancient China, something conveyed perfectly in this production by a chorus in identical, earth-coloured uniforms standing in seried ranks in pits built into the stage floor. Just like the terra cotta warriors. But the architecture told us we were in the ancient Middle East, with double-bull columns framing the palace. The Emperor was dressed as the Shah of Iran, circa 1950, while the bloodthirsty princess rocked a Grace Kelly in ballgowns vibe. Our victorious prince at least dressed Chinese, though more Kyng Fu monk that romantic hero. Oddest of all were the three advisors, each wearing a different shockingly bright primary colour and dressed in a series of hip hop mogul designs.

Some little girls turned up occasionally, obviously projections of Turandot’s memories, implying that her willingness to send all of her failed suitors to execution was the result of childhood sexual abuse rather than Puccini’s story of some wronged ancestress. Later, the production had Turandot seeing a vision of the slave girl she’d tortured to death as a trigger point to her character transformation at the end of the opera.

I don’t think this mash-up of concepts was entirely successful. They were just trying too many disparate things and probably would have delivered a stronger whole if they’d stuck to one big idea. But it was great to look at, all of the performers were solid and it’s always a thrill to hear “Nessun Dorma” performed live, in its original context. Most memorably in this production, the little girls and the ghost suggested what was going on in Turandot’s head, thereby giving some sort of logic to one of the most ludicrous endings in all of opera. Puccini might not have written it, but it worked.

Beyond the production itself, part of the fun of going to a new opera house is exploring the building. While its amphitheatre is a classically grand space .. all white and gold with plush red upholstery and frolicking gods painting on the ceiling … the foyers are actually a bit gloomy. The colour schemes out here are browns, beiges, dusky pinks and dark greys. The great hall you enter upon coming through the front doors actually feels like they’ve brought Palermo architecture in, but toned down the colours. The marble walls, with their engaged columns and architectural details, felt like the exteriors of the city’s palazzi, and this enormous space like a piazza between them. A browse through online photos indicates there are lots of interior spaces we didn’t see, including a rather spectacular rotunda that I suspect may be under the dome up top. In hindsight, it’s probably worth taking one of the tours of the building during the day to see more than you do as an audience member.

Downstairs is a brighter, more modern and very elegant cocktail bar, but by the time you get served you won’t have long to enjoy the atmosphere before you have to swig your drink and return to your seats. Locals clearly knew the fastest route to the bar and headed there the moment the curtain fell for intermission. Next time, so will we.

We discovered there’s also a restaurant outside, but within the area closed off from the piazza beyond by ornate railings. On a return visit, I’d go early and enjoy my aperitivo there before the show.

The neighbourhood around the opera is highly attuned to the crowds pouring in and out of here every night, with scores of cafes facing the building and lining the little lanes leading away from it. Our B&B, L’Olivella, was just 200 metres down one of these … the Via Bara All’Olivella. It’s a great place to stay for the opera and the street between it and Teatro Massimo is lined with restaurants.

At less than three hours’ flight time from Heathrow, Palermo offers opera lovers an easy weekend alternative to London. While flights will add to your costs, opera tickets and food will be less expensive and accommodation is reasonable. Head to their website for a long-range view of productions and get planning.

For another operatic excursion in Italy, see my article about our visit to the Verona Opera Festival last summer. It was a much weirder performance, but still a great experience.

To see Palermo’s greatest treasures, go to church

Palermo is a terrible city for ABC Tourists.

The letters stand for “another bloody church”. Back when my mother worked in travel as a sideline to teaching art history, tour guides used the label to describe an impatient sightseer who, having seen one example of one type of thing, ticked it off his to do list and was bored to see any more. Anyone satisfied with a single church may want to give the Sicilian capital a wide berth. Not only do religious buildings dominate the city, but many of the greatest artistic and architectural treasures are within them. Indeed, if you really want to see the best of Palermo, you’ll be spending more time in front of altars than a priest during Holy Week.

Any first-time visitor should prioritise the Palatine Chapel within the Royal Palace and the Cathedral at Monreale. Both are jaw-dropping masterpieces that mash-up Byzantine Christian mosaics with Arabic architecture. I’d seen them (and written about them) before, however, and wanted to dig into the next tier of masterpieces.

The most memorable from my long list was the Chiesa del Gesù, more frequently called the Casa Professa by locals. In Dr. Who there’s an ongoing gag about newcomers being in shock when they realise how much bigger the hero’s ship is on the inside than out. There’s a similar sort of disconnect here, but the shock comes between the extremely plain exterior and the eye-wateringly opulent interiors. Anyone who’s visited a few Italian Jesuit churches knows that when you combine those priests with Baroque architecture you usually end up with something completely over the top. This may be the most outrageous I’ve seen yet.

The church’s interiors are encrusted with multi-coloured marbles. They aren’t just inlaid. Many project from the walls’ surfaces. Fruit cascades in abundance. Birds and animals stick body parts out, putti (baby angels) cavort everywhere. At higher levels, near life-sized plaster figures act out scenes from the bible. Or just swan about joyously. This isn’t a place for quiet contemplation or gloomy thoughts. This decorative scheme provokes a giddy, overwhelmed joy.

I found myself wandering about giggling with nervous laughter as one viewpoint became more outrageous than the next. This place makes St. Peter’s look like streamlined Scandì design. Let your eye rest on a single square meter … a border of three-dimensional fruit in semi-precious stone, the face of a loving angel, the lush explosion of a vase of flowers rendered in inlaid marble … and you’ll marvel at the craftsmanship. Taken all together, it’s almost too much. Despite the risk of overdose, don’t miss the particularly opulent scenes in the tight space behind the main altar, which would have been for the eyes of priests alone, or the treasures kept in the museum though the door there. Sumptuous altar cloths encrusted with tiny red coral beads are almost as three dimensional as the church outside. You’d need to layer on a lot of bling not to get upstaged by your surroundings while saying mass here. The sparkling array of religious accessories here shows how they attempted it. 

The extraordinarily lifelike plasterwork here is by the Serpotta family, a name that will dominate your experience of Baroque churches in Palermo. Giacomo is probably Sicily’s greatest sculptor. He appears to have never left the island, but rather asked travellers to bring back books and sketches of what was happening in Rome and beyond. He, with brother and son, then interpreted them for his local market. His versions are not just better than anything in Sicily, but on par with anything Bernini created in Rome or the virtuoso Asam family produced in Munich. 

To get the full impact of his talent you need to seek out his oratories, smaller private chapels where his plasterwork dominates the decorative scheme rather than just enhancing it. The most famous is the Oratorio di Santa Cita. Here’s another mismatch of inside and out. The small road to the chapel is dingy. The building’s exterior … like so much of Palermo … is covered in graffiti. To get to the chapel you climb a plain flight of steps with a quiet, peaceful courtyard garden to your right. Even the anti-room where you buy your ticket is fairly plain. Then you duck through a curtain and, bam!, you’re smacked upside the head with the sheer force of art.

The walls are crowded with impressive figures, from flocks of those trademark Serpotta putti to statuesque women embodying the mysteries of the rosary. Exquisitely rendered cascades of fruit, foliage and flowers surround them. It’s as heavily decorated as the Casa Professa, but it’s all white and flooded with light from big windows two thirds of the way up the walls, which makes it a more soothing place. 

Until you turn around and check out the back wall. It’s hard to feel soothed when confronted with a detailed recreation of the naval battle of Lepanto so lifelike you can practically hear the cannon fire and men screaming as they tumble overboard. Here, the putti swarm around piles of armour and weapons. It seems an unusual motif for a religious building unless you know that Lepanto was the point at which European powers definitively stopped Islamic expansion into Europe. It was also considered a specifically Catholic victory at a time when the wars of the Reformation were raging, so a nice bit of one-upsmanship against those irritating Protestants. Many consider this to be the Serpotta family’s masterpiece.

A short stroll down a nearby cross street brings you to the Oratory of San Domenico. (You can buy a combination ticket to see both, and they’re so close to each other it’s foolish not to.) Though the room is almost the same size as Santa Cita, and it also features life-sized plaster women representing various religious ideas around its walls, San Domenico has an entirely different feel. The plasterwork is broken up by moody paintings. There are more distinctive architectural features in the plaster like towering columns and great swags of drapery, and there’s a fair amount of gold gilding. It’s heavier, more serious and more masculine than Santa Cita, and feels more like something out of the English Baroque than the Palermitan. That may have something to do with the altarpiece, which isn’t an ornate tower of carved marble but a painting. A painting by Sir Anthony Van Dyck … someone so completely embedded in the story of English art it came as a real surprise to encounter him here.

There are three more Serpotta oratories in Palermo and I could have happily continued my “compare and contrast” exploration across them all, but I needed to plunge backwards in time.

Though the Palatine Chapel and the Cathedral in Monreale are the greatest examples of this city’s unique Arab-Norman culture, there are two more churches a stones’ throw from the famous Quattro Canti that are worthy runners up. 

San Cataldo is tiny, and all about the architecture. It looks more mosque than church, with its three distinctive red domes and Arabic arches, but it never served an Islamic function. It was build after the Normans took over from the Arabs, but inspired by their style. It did host a post office in the 18th century, by which time almost all of its interior decoration had been stripped out. Though it’s been restored, it hasn’t been re-decorated, so you can fully admire its magnificent bones. Go here first, for a better appreciation of what happens when you put flesh on that infrastructure.

Just next door is Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio. Its facade is a rather horrible hotch-potch of Arab-Norman, high gothic and Baroque, with none of the successive renovators making any attempt to integrate their work with the past. But, like so much in Palermo, it’s not the outside you’re here to look at. Inside, the Arab-Norman bones are intact and they retain most of their covering of magnificent mosaics. Angels and saints glimmer against an expanse of gold. The Virgin Mary dazzles in blue. Stars sparkle from a lapis night sky. Flowers and foliage twine across archways. Near the entrance, Roger II … the father of Sicily’s greatest age … has himself shown being crowned by Jesus. It’s an elegant bit of PR, considering that the pope was dragging his heels acknowledging Roger’s promotion from duke. When in doubt, go up the management chain.

The Admiral’s Church, as it’s known in English, didn’t manage to retain all of its original mosaics. About a third of the decoration, including the high altar, is Baroque. About the best you can say of it is that it isn’t intrusive. The colours and placement of figures work with what was there before so they fade into background. Though this isn’t a large church, plan on plenty of time here, moving from chair to chair to look up and appreciate the mosaic artistry.

A short stroll up the Via Vittorio Emanuele, one of the cross streets of the Quattro Canti, brings you to what you might think would be the most impressive church in town: the cathedral. It starts well. Unlike the Admiral’s bad exterior mash-up, the outside of this church is a wonderfully delicate blend of Arab-Norman features and later enhancements. That’s aided by an enormous piazza-cum-garden which sets off the architecture with swaying palm trees. Through the door, however, comes one of the few church interiors in Palermo that can actually be called boring. It’s big. It’s white. It has a bit of undistinguished statuary. There’s nothing memorable here and it looks like thousands of churches up and down the Italian peninsula.

Unless you turn left. A bit like heading that direction when boarding an airplane, all the important people are tucked away here. The cathedral houses the tombs of the Norman dynasty that made Sicily the artistic and intellectual showplace of Europe in the 12th and early 13th centuries. 

Here’s Roger II, the one you just saw being crowned by Jesus, and his grandson Frederick II. The younger man was known in his lifetime as stupor mundi, or wonder of the world, and was also Holy Roman Emperor. Here you’ll also find Frederick’s mother Constance, who did a remarkable job holding her father’s empire together … including abandoning the peaceful convent life she preferred to marry the German ruler, buried here beside her, and give birth to an heir when she was almost 40. Frederick’s wife, also a Constance, rounds out this fascinating group. Older than her superstar husband, Constance ruled Sicily for years while Frederick sorted out his more troublesome German inheritance. 

Given the lavishly decorated churches and palaces these people left behind, their tombs are almost austere. Massive dark marble sarcophagi sit beneath canopies held up by gracious columns. There’s a bit of mosaic work beneath the canopies and on the columns to add some colour but it’s mostly austere and august. Very ancient Roman, actually. That seems appropriate for people who thought they were establishing an Italian empire that would last generations. Sadly, it didn’t make it past Frederick’s children. But the tombs remain as a somber testament to the glories of Sicily’s greatest age.

There are 84 churches in Palermo before you dip into oratorios, private chapels and other religious architecture. It’s enough to overwhelm even the biggest architecture nerd, much less the ABC tourist. If you can get to these four examples, however, plus the Palatine Chapel and the Cathedral at Monreale, I promise you variety, beauty and wonder that will captivate anyone.

Sicilian Food Part Three: A mash-up of cooking school, palace peeping and literary greatness

My husband and I have been including cooking classes in our holidays since our second trip together. We both love food, and have always found cooking workshops a fantastic way to understand more about a place while honing our culinary skills. It seems we’ve been trend setters. What was once a relatively scarce option has moved on to the must-do list of modern travellers. Travel sites now overflow with options.

I’m not sure the expansion has been for the better.

The explosion in cooking experiences brings a host of instructors who may or may not have any real credentials, demonstrating a few recipes in spaces that may or may not be appropriately kitted out for a lesson. Many classes appear pitched to people who don’t cook much, and offer the same handful of dishes that everyone knows for the country in question. You’ll find the same pizza and tiramisu-making combo across Italy, for example, even though the first is a Neapolitan dish, the second from the northeast, and passionate locals would much rather have you eating their regional specialties. Despite the proliferation of options, I think it’s harder these days to find a really excellent experience than it was when cooking classes were relatively rare.

Extensive web research, however, can still reveal real jewels. This year it led me to the Duchess of Palma, Nicoletta Lanzi Tomasi, and her remarkable day of instruction, stories and good food in Palermo. 

This isn’t just a cooking class but an all-around experience. You start with a stroll through the market as the duchess explains the deep traditions of shopping here. Then it’s back to her family palazzo by the sea, a setting which immediately elevates this above your standard class. After a morning of cooking together you sit down to eat what you’ve produced in the palace’s dining room. The delights don’t end there. You’ll walk off some of that lunch touring the palazzo, once the home of Prince Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampadusa, author of what’s arguably the greatest of all Italian novels, The Leopard. Food, literature, elegant dining, art and architecture all in one day. I was in heaven.

The day starts in the courtyard of the palazzo on the edge of the Kalsa district. The impressive line of palaces of which this is one were built on old Spanish defensive walls facing the sea, stretching south from the famous Porta Felice. (Comprised of two baroque gatehouses, on either side of a road that forms the main spine of old Palermo and famously frame the setting sun, the Porta is amongst the most iconic symbols of Palermo.) You don’t linger long there, however, as you’ll be bundled into cars and whisked to Capo market. While Palermo’s other markets, Vucciria and Ballarò, have skewed more towards street food stalls and bars, Capo is still pretty much exclusively a functioning market for the locals with stall owners selling fruit, veg, fish, meat, and specialty ingredients. The duchess explained how there’s a sense of ownership between stall holders and their customers. In the Sicilian language you would say that you belong to each other. Vendors get to know you and your needs, and … once you become a regular customer … they would be mortally offended if you shopped anywhere else. You don’t handle the wares here; you tell the vendors what you want and they select for you. Meaning, of course, the regular customers will get the best.

Capo lies along a fairly dingy street overhung by 18th century buildings, their balconies festooned with laundry, football flags, plants and whatever doesn’t fit into the flats inside. Even on a sunny day, it feels like most of the light radiates from the beauties for sale, not from the sun above. Luscious shades of pink glowing atop bright white beds of ice in the fish stalls. Jars of honey catching and reflecting light like golden lanterns. Fruit and veg in every colour of the rainbow, all seeming far larger and more vibrant than what finally makes it to supermarket shelves in England.

Ingredients procured, we were bundled back into the cars waiting at the end of the street and returned to the palace. We went in a side door (the grand staircase was saved for our exit) and followed the Duchess through a warren of rooms. Some were small and functional, others more generously-proportioned sitting rooms. None particularly palatial in size but all furnished … elegantly but with a casual feel … with layers of art and antiques you only get from the accretion of many generations. There’s a passage in The Leopard where the young lovers go exploring in the family’s old palace and lose themselves in the bewildering labyrinth of rooms. I felt like I’d stepped not just into the author’s house, but into his novel.

We’d taken this route to get to the garden, a terrace about 50 feet wide and stretching the whole length of the palace, so densely planted with semi-tropical trees and vines it seemed impossible that we were in a big city. It also helps, of course, that the views from here are of the seafront and the mountains framing the northwest of Palermo’s bay. Traditional Sicilian tiles marked paths between the beds and water splashed into fountains occupied by rather majestic tortoises.

You could very happily curl up here with a good book for hours. But we were here to harvest herbs and edible flowers for lunch. The duchess established the format for the cooking session here, assigning different roles to individuals so the whole group was multi-tasking. It’s worth noting here that this is not a cooking class where each student does everything at his or her own workspace under the instruction of the leader. You may be in one room juicing oranges while someone else is peeling potatoes and another classmate is browning off onions. You’ll get recipes at the end, but if you’re looking for the kind of class that gets you “hands on” with every step of a recipe, this may make you a bit anxious.

The menu was seasonal (more aubergines, naturally) and of the region, though it turns out the duchess is originally from Venice. This made her stories even more interesting to me, as she reflected on the dramatic differences from her native region that she discovered when she first arrived here.

We started with polpette di melanzane, an aubergine-based take on meatballs perfect if you have an abundance of that purple vegetable … which seems to include everyone in Sicily in September … and an excellent vegetarian starter. You simply roast the whole aubergines until they go soft, scoop out the flesh, combine with herbs, seasoning, cheese, egg and breadcrumb. Then shape into balls, roll in bread crumbs and fry. I think this could also make an excellent side to simple preparations of meat or fish. The pasta course featured a sage and almond pesto; a useful reminder that you can play around with a lot more than basil here. Top tip: don’t add the oil until the very end, so you use only what the mixture needs get to the right consistency.

The main was stuffed calamari, something I’d done before but it was useful to get professional tips. Formal instruction showed me that I’d been over-stuffing my version. I also learned that salted capers, rinsed and dried, are much nicer than the usual ones in brine if you can find them, and that sanding your pan with bread crumbs before frying the calamari helps them not to stick. We wandered south from Sicily to the island of Pantelleria for the inspiration for the accompanying potato salad; a sharp, vinegary version with red onions and more of those gorgeous salted capers.

Desert was a “gelo” of melon. Gelo is simply fruit juice and sugar, heated and thickened with corn flour (corn starch if you're speaking American). It’s presumably what inspired the American brand Jell-o, as the texture is almost identical. Rather stupidly, it never occurred to me that my recipe for watermelon gelo could be used for any fruit, and made into an elegant sweet. Here, we poured the thickened mixture into coup-style glasses that had been dusted with powdered cinnamon and then dressed the tops with edible flowers before putting the glasses in the fridge to set. The order of cooking, of course, was not necessarily the same as of eating, depending on the times needed to prepare. Dessert, for example, was the first thing we tackled because of the setting time.

One of the joys of these experiences is sitting down your classmates to share the fruits of your efforts. I’ve never had more fun with the eating part of a cooking class, because I’ve never wrapped one up in such lavish interiors. We sat down at a table set for 12 under impressive Venetian glass chandeliers. Proper china, glassware and cutlery had been laid out and the duchess’ assistant had changed into an old-style black and white maid’s uniform to serve. French doors stood open on either side of the room, the exterior ones showing off the sea view while interior faced a courtyard draped with plants. The furniture was grand, 19th-century stuff at home in the architecture, with silver gleaming from the sideboard and big display cabinets showing off an impressive array of glassware marked with the family crest. Landscapes and family portraits looked down on us. I felt distinctly under-dressed.

After an unhurried lunch, the duchess rose from the table and invited us to tour the palace. (You take your things with you at this point, as the tour also leads you out.)

As you wander through the ballroom, the library, a sitting room and several more streamlined, museum-like rooms, the duchess explains the history of the building, its connection to the famous author and how her husband ended up as the heir. Tomasi di Lampedusa didn’t have children, but adopted the younger son of some equally aristocratic cousins to ensure he had someone to pass his legacy on to. The adopted Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi would go on to marry Nicoletta, your host for the day, and was a giant in the cultural world. He ran several orchestras and opera houses, led the Italian Cultural Institute in New York and wrote several books. Back in Palermo, he restored this palace … heavily damaged in WWII … and helped to promote his adopted father’s legacy.

Here, you can see the original manuscript of the book, first editions, notes and excerpts that weren’t used, and the library where he did most of his work. There’s a portrait of the author’s father, who was the model for the prince who is the main character in the book. If you’ve read The Leopard, everything in these rooms will remind you of some aspect of the story. If you haven’t read it, don’t even dream of setting foot in Sicily without doing so. It unlocks the soul of this island. It also turns Cooking with the Duchess into the most unique culinary workshop I’ve ever experienced.

I predict that a day cooking with the duchess in The Leopard’s lair will become a much hotter ticket next year after Netflix brings out its new adaptation of the novel. So if you’re interested in joining her, get in touch well in advance.

An additional note: The duchess also offers rental apartments within the sprawling palace for tourists. I loved our B&B for its proximity to the opera but I'd be very tempted to try this on my next visit to Palermo,