Islands of the Central Mediterranean: Malta, Gozo, Sicily & the Aeolian Islands

5 - 24 October 2012

Tour Highlights

This tour will be led by Professor Frank Sear, a world expert on ancient Roman architecture, with the assistance of ASA tour manager Dr Julia Kelly. Some of the highlights of this tour are:

• • Special lecture and site visit program hosted by the University of Malta
• • Explore some of Europe's earliest prehistoric remains on Malta and Gozo
• • Understand the development of one of the world's greatest 'planned cities', Valletta, with its massive early fortifications and grand palaces
• • Visit medieval villages in Malta and Sicily
• • Visit Greek cities, theatres and temple complexes throughout Sicily
• • View one of the world's greatest corpuses of Roman mosaics in Piazza Armerina (Sicily)
• • Trace the development of Caravaggio's painting in Valletta, Messina and Syracuse
• • Visit two princely palaces in Palermo. One of these is the Palazzo Gange, famed setting for the chapter entitled 'A Ball' in The Leopard
• • Attend a traditional Sicilian puppet show in Palermo
• • Take a boat tour of the Aeolian Islands Panarea and Stromboli, and explore Lipari with a local expert
• • See the magnificent Riace Bronzes in Reggio Calabria.

Overnight Valletta, Malta (5 nights) • Taormina (2 nights) • Syracuse (2 nights) • Agrigento (2 nights) • Palermo (4 nights) • Lipari (3 nights) • Reggio di Calabria (1 night).

Visits include MALTA Marsaxlokk Fishing Village • Valletta • Mdina • Rabat • Gozo • Prehistoric Temples of Hagar Qim & Tarxien • Cotonera & Margherita Lines (fortifications) • City & Ramparts of Vittoriosa; ITALY Messina • Noto • Piazza Armerina • Selinute • Segesta • Monreale • Cefalù • Panarea & Stromboli • Scilla

About the Tour

This tour explores the history of two islands at the centre of the ancient and medieval world. In Malta we are hosted by the University of Malta, whose professors lecture and lead site visits to prehistoric temples - the oldest structures in Europe - Arab and Norman fortress cities, and the magnificent cities built by the Knights of Malta. In Sicily we visit the magnificent Graeco-Roman theatre in Taormina on the slopes of Mt Etna, and explore the intimate and fascinating medieval towns around the base of the mountain, a region known for its distinctive basalt architecture which was home to the last community of Muslims in Sicily. We visit a wealth of Greek cities, temples and theatre complexes in Syracuse, Agrigento, Selinunte and Segesta, and the villa at Piazza Armerina, one of the world's great corpuses of ancient Roman Mosaics. In Palermo we explore the fascinating kingdom of the Normans through its museums, its architecture, and in a special performance of a puppet show, a traditional Sicilian art infused with the craft of storytelling. In Norman Palermo we find an extraordinary mix of Arab stone inlay, fretted windows and intricate ceilings, Byzantine mosaics and Frankish sculpture, in the architecture of pleasure palaces, courtly chapels, grand cathedrals and ethereal tabernacles. Sicily reached its zenith in this period. The region's subsequent decline nevertheless produced great novels and lovely cityscapes inflected by exquisite Baroque churches and opulent palaces. The current owners of two of these palaces - including the Palazzo Gange, made famous in the chapter 'A Ball' of The Leopard, will host exclusive visits by the group.

Historical Background

Malta and its more fertile neighbour Gozo are extraordinary rock plateaux jutting from the deep blue Mediterranean, the colour of which contrasts vividly with the golden hues of stone bared by the loss of nearly all the island's top-soil. This abundance of fine golden stone is one reason for Malta's unique architectural heritage of churches, shrines, palaces, small houses and incomparable fortifications. Despite a diversity of building styles (from Medieval to Baroque), this construction material gives great unity to the island's cities and architecture. Clear, cloudless skies are dominated by a sun that bleaches the rocky landscape and plays across high cliffs which drop sheer to the sea on the south coast of the island. Inflecting the sea-blue and stone-gold are startling flashes of primary colour with which the Maltese adorn doors, fishing boats and motor vehicles.

Sicily, conversely, is mountainous and moody. The atmospherics of weather breaking up on its dramatic peaks render Sicily an apt setting for the Greek myth of Persephone abducted by Hades, and for dramatic episodes of the Odyssey such as Polyphemus hurling great rocks into the sea and Scylla and Charybdis luring sailors to their deaths. Sicily's mountains have been ravaged by excessive cultivation, while erosion reveals high escarpments of virgin rock. The fertile soil of deep ravines and coastal plains, on the other hand, supports an embarrassment of riches. The orange trees from which the Conca d'Oro, the wide theatre-like valley surrounding Palermo, gains its name, create seas of gold amongst deep green foliage.

Ancient History

Although the shapes, tones and colours of Malta and Sicily differ dramatically, their histories are interwoven. It has been their fate to sit at the centre of the most travelled sea in the world, which exudes an incomparable density of cultural and symbolic meaning. They are possibly the most invaded and occupied islands on the globe. This tour studies the rich tapestry of cultures which have ebbed and flowed across them.

Malta boasts the oldest structures in the world, great temple circles built from megaliths. We shall visit a number of these which were built by two cultures, one peaceful, the other warlike. The Greeks prospered in Sicily but did not colonise Malta. The Phoenicians, who founded a number of Sicilian centres (such as Palermo), gave to Malta some elements of its language and possibly, as some scholars argue, certain constituents in the designs of Maltese fishing craft. In Sicily we shall visit the magnificent Greek temples and theatres of Syracuse, Agrigento, Selinus, Segesta and Taormina, as well as the excellent collection of architectural sculpture in the National Archaeological Museum, Palermo.

The Romans left little on Malta for us to see. They exploited Sicily mercilessly. It came to be dominated by great grain-growing estates (latifundia) worked by slaves. One of these, the Imperial Villa of Casale near Piazza Armerina, boasts one of the finest and most complete groups of Roman mosaic floors anywhere. Its decoration includes hunts for African animals for the amphitheatre at Rome.

Malta, on the other hand, is proud of the fact that St Paul was ship-wrecked here on his way to trial in Rome. He converted the Roman governor to Christianity. Rabat, at the centre of Malta, has interesting catacombs with important Early Christian paintings.

Barbarian invaders in Late Antiquity left little of their culture on either island. Malta and Sicily then came under the sway of the Byzantines, and Malta first assumed its status as a crucial entrepôt and island-fortress. Little remains of the Byzantine occupation, and this can also be said of the physical culture of the next invaders, the Arabs. Whereas Frederick II expelled the last remaining Arab enclaves from Sicily - thus ensuring the disappearance of Arab elements from Sicilian dialects - the core of Maltese derives from Arabic. This fact, and a number of agricultural practices, suggest that small Arab communities remained after the Christian conquest of Malta, albeit as converts to Christianity. Malta owes the present plan of its old capital, Mdina, at the centre of the island, to the Arabs. At this time people did not live on the island's coasts as they were prone to raids by corsairs. This explains the inland location of Mdina.

The other major linguistic element in Maltese is Sicilian dialect. Scholars of the linguistic geography of Malta have shown that Arab names, which are of medieval origin, tend to predominate in the middle of the island, whereas Sicilian words, which often describe building practices, intruded at a later time, spreading slowly inland from the ports. This is due to the importation of a Sicilian work-force by the Knights of Malta, who moved the capital of the island north to the Grand Harbour.

Norman Sicily

The Normans ousted the Arabs from Sicily and Malta and left Sicily with an incomparable visual culture in architecture and mosaic. We shall study the great cathedrals of Cefalù and Monreale, the Palatine Chapel and the exquisite mosque-like churches of Santa Maria del Amiraglio and S. Cataldo. There are also some Norman palaces to be seen at Mdina.

The Normans created in Sicily an exotic, sophisticated, cosmopolitan court based upon elements of French, Byzantine and Arab culture. The Swabians, who inherited the island from the Normans, concentrated upon fortifications. In cities like Erice we see the southern-most of a string of fortifications built by Frederick II through the centre of his empire, which stretched from Sicily to northern Germany. This vain attempt to force upon the Holy Roman Empire some unity could not endure. The Angevins came to dominate Sicily until massacred by the islanders during the Sicilian Vespers. The Sicilians did not, however, establish an independent state like contemporary regions in Tuscany but invited Aragon to rule them - and the Maltese.

Spanish Malta

Spanish power endured in Malta until the island was given, for an annual rent of one falcon, by the Emperor Charles V (Charles I of Spain) to the Knights of St John. The Order of St John of Jerusalem had evolved from a confraternity of pious merchants from Amalfi which had established a hospital and hospice for Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land in the 11th century. The Crusades transformed the hospitallers into an aristocratic fighting order which nevertheless retained its original commission to provide succour to the needy.

The Knights Hospitallers became immensely wealthy, but Islamic invasions forced them to withdraw from Jerusalem to Acre in 1187 and from the Holy Land in 1291. They were dislodged from Cyprus and Rhodes by the Turks in 1522, and in 1530 were granted Malta as a fiefdom by Charles V. The popularity and prestige which accrued after they repulsed the Turks during the Great Siege (1565) established them permanently on the island. They initiated a 150-year construction of unrivalled fortifications and built Valletta, their new capital, on a hilly peninsula between two magnificent natural harbours. Valletta is one of the most intact and beautiful Baroque cities in Europe. Major architects and artists embellished the city and much of the island with masterpieces.

Our study of the material culture of Malta will pivot upon the great building programs of the Knights and the paintings which decorated them. Caravaggio fled here from Rome and left in the Cathedral a masterpiece, the Execution of St John the Baptist. We shall compare this to three other great Caravaggios, the St Lucy in Syracuse, and the Adoration of the Shepherds and Raising of Lazarus in Messina. It was to Sicily that Caravaggio fled the ire of the Knights and it is here he painted his last great works.

Succession

Sicily remained under Spanish rule until the War of the Spanish Succession (1700-1715). Many historians argue that this was a period of decline for the island. Whereas Malta assumed a unique position as a bastion against the Turks, Sicily became a backwater as the powerhouse of European culture moved north to countries like Holland and France and west to the Spanish possessions in the New World. Nevertheless, Sicily boasts wonderful Baroque architecture which developed through church and aristocratic patronage under the Spanish Viceroys and, in the 18th century, the Bourbons of Naples. This is the architecture of absolutism, which saw the declining lot of the Sicilian peasantry and the inhibiting of entrepreneurial middle class activity in the cities.

It was at the end of this period that Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote his great historical novel, which encapsulates Sicily's unwillingness to embrace the culture of modernism. Palermo boasts a wonderful corpus of decrepit Baroque palaces, first among which 

is the Palazzo Gange, in which he set the chapter of The Leopard entitled 'A Ball'. Sicily boasts a wonderful 19th and 20th century literature. We shall look at the literary landscapes of other writers such as Verga, Pirandello and Sciascia. Malta, after a century and a half of British rule, is fighting to nurture its native language with the consequence that a national literature is burgeoning here as well.

We shall not only look at the imperial cultures of Viceroys and Knights but also the fascinating popular culture of Maltese fishing boats, lace-work, glass-blowing, folk-tales and religious festivals. In Sicily we shall see painted carts and go to a performance of puppets, medieval knights who enact the epic cycles of Charlemagne's battles against the 'Moors'. Both Sicily and Malta are palimpsests or overlays of cultures of fascinating variety. It is this feast of cultures, in unique physical settings, which enriches this study of the Central Mediterranean.