New Ways To Visit Sicily This Year

27.03.2024 - 14:16 / forbes.com / Belle Epoque / Sophia Loren / Grace Kelly / Art

For those looking to visit Sicily and experience it in a new way, a good place to start is the Villa Igiea in Palermo. A cherished landmark, the villa is testament to a great Italian dynasty, theFlorios, who were widely chronicled in Europe for both their business acumen and social prowess, as the Astors and Vanderbilts were in the U.S., during the Belle Epoque. Designed in neo-Gothic and Art Nouveau styles, Villa Igiea was purchased by the Florios to be used as a health retreat for an ailing daughter. Instead they turned it into a hotel, which would come to be known for a glittering guest list that included kings and emperors and film-world royalty like Roberto Rossellini and Sophia Loren. In 2019, Rocco Forte Hotels purchased the historic property and initiated a multi-year refurbishment overseen by Olga Polizzi, director of design and deputy chairman of RFH.

Interest in the Florios, once dubbed the “uncrowned kings of Sicily,” has never waned since their glory days more than a century ago, although the family fortune faded away. What better proof than the novel,The Florios of Sicily, written by Stefania Auci and published in 2019, which became an international best-seller, with 1.5 million copies sold in Italy alone.

It’s not surprising that the Villa Igiea and its sister hotel, the Verdura Resort in Sciacca, an under two-hour drive from Palermo, have tapped into the ongoing fascination with the Florios and Sicilian culture to create travel experiences for guests wanting to see a lesser-known, yet authentic, side of the island. Their latest program, called Sicilian Matriarchy, with itinerary tours led by women, takes inspiration from the most glamorous figure in the Florio saga, Donna Franca Florio (the “donna” honorific because of her father’s noble roots), a woman as famous in her day as a Princess of Wales or Grace Kelly.

Franca added youthful glamour to turn-of-the-century Palermo, cementing it as a hot stop for European elites; her cultural passions and social savvy also brought attention and prestige to the Florios’ extensive business empire. It was an unexpected trajectory for young Francesca Paola Jacona della Motta dei Baroni di San Giuliano (her very full name).“She was a fragile young woman who found herself catapulted from an ordinary family to the status of wife of one of the richest men in Europe,” says Stefania Auci, the best-selling author. (Her own family was long on aristocratic titles, but shorter on cash.) “That meant being perpetually under everyone's eyes, evaluated, weighed and judged. She changed her way of being to be able to live up to the situation and the family she had entered.” Franca Florio lived up to the situation so well that no less than Kaiser Wilhelm, the German