Sicily According to Marcella

Marcella is a Sicilian scholar, and you visit her private residence in Mondello with her daughter Irene. They walk you through her collection of Sicilian crafts, gathered across a lifetime of research and travel. Marcella generously opens her house for this occasion — it's not open to the public — and every object inside has a story. She picks up pieces and traces their story — and Sicily's. Through her stories, Sicily emerges as a meeting point of the Mediterranean — a bridge between north and south, east and west for over 3,000 years — shaped by waves of arrivals from the Phoenicians onward, and by the less-visible communities of Albanians, Jews, Lombards who left behind some of the island's most unexpected cultural and linguistic influences. That mixed heritage extends into the kitchen and the music — you sit down to a traditional Sicilian lunch based on recipes and ingredients that carry the same layered history. The visit closes with a live session of traditional Sicilian music.

There are certain human encounters during travel that you'll think about years later: sitting in the home of someone whose life's work is on the tables and overflowing on the shelves around them, hearing them tell you about a photograph, an object, a piece of art. This is that kind of afternoon. Marcella is one of a handful of academics who have made Sicilian folk culture their life's work. Her published books on Sicilian storytelling and crafts describe material that is literally in her rooms. Each object's story leads to another — puppets, painted carts, textiles, ceramics, traditional clothing — and Marcella connects them to the peoples and periods that shaped them, to her own story of finding them, and to the insights about Sicilian culture each object has given her. The recipes at lunch come from regional traditions; the folk music is a live version of what her books document. You leave with a set of stories you couldn't have heard anywhere else — Sicily, according to Marcella.

Marcella Croce, Irene’s mother, is a writer, researcher, and lifelong scholar of Sicilian folk culture. Her academic work includes The Chivalric Folk Tradition in Sicily (McFarland, 2014) and History on the Road: The Painted Carts of Sicily, both English-language studies grounded in decades of fieldwork across the island. After working abroad for many years, she returned to her native Sicily, where she has dedicated her life to documenting, preserving, and sharing its traditions. Over a lifetime of research and collecting, she has filled her home in Mondello with an extraordinary collection of Sicilian folk art from across the island. Every piece reflects a living tradition and carries the memory of the people who made and used it. In this experience, Marcella welcomes you into this deeply personal space — an experience curated together with her daughter Irene, her co-host for this visit.

Comfortable clothing for a home visit. No walking gear needed — the experience takes place indoors and at the table.