“There is quite possibly no better way to truly connect with a foreign culture than to join in a local festival”  Ann Abel is convinced of this, she is a journalist on the authoritative US magazine, Forbes, which periodically draws up a chart of the richest people in the world and has named the Teatro del Fuoco ® International Fire-dancing Festival as one of the twelve coolest events in the world to which it is worth making a trip.  A trip to Sicily where, for eight years now, the Festival has been touring around the Aeolian Islands, Etna, Palermo, Catania and the Aegadian Islands.

This year, for the ninth edition, the Teatro del Fuoco will be in Palermo from 29 to 30 July.

The images of Julia Roberts enjoying an ice cream in Piazza Navona during the filming of “Eat Pray Love” traveled all around the world: Rome and ice cream, two undisputed symbols of Italian-ness. But ice cream cannot only be found in Rome: if we allow ourselves to be seduced by this Italian delicacy it will take us on an unusual journey of discovery of some of the “sweetest” places on the Italian peninsula.

My Sicily is a metaphor…Just like the title of the interview- book I wrote in 1979 with the author Leonardo Sciascia for Stock publications, which was translated into Italian by Mondadori. I discovered Sicily in 1975.  I had a meeting with Sciascia who has just agreed to become an “independent” candidate on the Communist party’s list for the municipal elections in Palermo.  The news had caused great excitement in the editorial offices of the Nouvel Observateur: how could a critical, even sceptical writer suddenly throw himself into politics? And in Sicily, no less?