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Faces of Sicily: Where the Island Speaks Through Its People

When we decided to open The Columbist’s travel section, Sicily became our first step.
After all, if we have Faces of Berlin, how could we not have Faces of Sicily, an island that lives through its people, through their voices, gestures, and quiet rebellions?

Elena Kaplyar-Balzer

Photo: Juan Antonio Guzman, Unsplash

It started as a pilot project. Ten days, six cities, fourteen encounters. The plan was ambitious, maybe even impossible. But with the help of the wonderful team from Il Made in Sicily, a platform devoted to celebrating the island’s uniqueness and connecting its creatives at home and abroad, the picture began to form. We didn’t want just places. We wanted people, those who stay, create, and reinvent the island from within.

Because Sicily isn’t just one thing. It’s the most beautiful contradiction: generous and restless, ancient and experimental, layered with light, history, and the rhythm of life itself. You can read it through its faces: the artists, jewelers, dreamers, and doers who show that real change here begins not with policy, but with passion.

In Palermo, Veronica Mancuso plays with fire, clay, and instinct, creating ceramics that look both ancient and new. “I don’t follow the rules,” she smiles. “Every time I open the kiln, it’s like seeing a new planet.” Her work, full of bold geometry and earth tones, could easily stand in a design gallery in Milan and yet it belongs nowhere but Sicily. Not far away, architect Sebastiano Provenzano brings back the sea to the people with his redesign of Palermo’s Trapezoidal Pier: “Architecture here isn’t about power,” he says, “it’s about perspective and helping people see their city again.”

Down at the port, Marco and Constanza Durastanti, founders of the Costanza Filiera del Gusto group, and their partner Pasquale Dipollina, run three restaurants and nearly a hundred staff between Palermo and Cefalù. For them, cooking is culture. “We want people to taste where they are,” Pasquale says, his voice both calm and proud. “Excellence of the territory. That’s our only rule.” Their kitchens use only local flours, wines, herbs, and fish - a culinary ecosystem built entirely from Sicily itself. “You grow when you demand more from yourself,” he adds, “and you stay alive when you never stop learning.”

Nearby, Giovanni Callea, co-founder of Il Made in Sicily, tells stories that rarely make the news. It’s all about artisans, musicians, and people who craft meaning with their hands. “We give space to those whose stories would otherwise stay unseen,” he says. His dream is to open a museum  which will be a home for Sicilians abroad, and for anyone curious to understand the island from within. He recalls an artwork his team once sent to Tokyo - broken on arrival, repaired by a Japanese artist using kintsugi. “That’s Sicily too,” he smiles. “We rise by mending.”

At Sperone167, on the edge of Palermo, Gaspare Monte points toward walls once gray and forgotten, now alive with color. “Art gave us dignity,” he says. Murals of women, workers, and children now stretch across the buildings, painted by artists from all over the world. His favorite piece? A phoenix. “Because it means freedom - the ability to rise again.”

He laughs when he adds, “We used to be invisible. Now journalists walk these streets. People look at us differently. The murals gave us a voice.”

Further north, Alberto Rizzo, chef of Osteria dei Vespri, bridges two Italys - the northern roots of his mother from Parma and the southern heritage of his father from Palermo. “That’s why our kitchen is both refined and emotional,” he says. “We respect the classic, but we cook with courage.” His tasting menus balance tradition and curiosity: Sicilian raw materials, northern precision, Mediterranean soul. “Mature cuisine,” he explains, “is one that listens to experience, to memory, to taste.”

In Piana degli Albanesi, jewelry designer Sergio Lucito continues a legacy that’s as golden as his pieces. His atelier, Gli Ori di Piana, has created jewelry that once appeared in Il Gattopardo, the legendary Visconti film. “My family has been making jewelry for generations,” he says. “It’s about preserving what is timeless - the Sicilian soul in metal.” His Byzantine-inspired filigree earrings, famously filmed in his atelie and worn by Angelique in Gattopardo, are as delicate as poetry: small pieces of light made by a man who speaks about history as if it were still alive.

But in Sicily, food and craft always come with philosophy. In nearby San Cipirello, Daniela Ragusa, founder of Marena, redefines Sicilian street classics for a new generation — arancine made from organic rice grown in Catania, saffron from Corleone, and bread from ancient grains. “Traditions grow like people do,” he says. “We can change everything if it makes the food cleaner.” He tells a story of a customer who claimed he couldn’t eat fried food: “I made him a bet,” he laughs. “He ate my arancina, then a cannolo and no acidity. I won.”

A few kilometers away, Salvatore Bilello perfects a mortadella so fragrant with fennel it once won national recognition. “It’s all about love for what you do,” he says. “You can feel it in the taste.”

And when you meet Maria Di Stefano, who keeps alive the nearly forgotten art of lace embroidery by hand in iana di Albanesi, you realize that every thread of this island holds a story.

In Cefalù, Gelal Ben Saad, founder of Neo Mediterraneo Vibes, serves cocktails like stories - each with rhythm, color, and a touch of nostalgia. “Sicily taught me how to slow down,” he says. “You come here to feel something again.”

Not far from him, a son of a fisherman and martial artist Antonio Papa describes the sea like a philosopher: “You set the nets, you wait for hours, and it’s silent. Then, at sunrise, the sea gives you back your patience. It’s meditation.”

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