VISITING MOUNT ETNA I've written before about Mount Etna - the huge volcano which dominates northeastern Sicily and which has a history of eruptions that have played such an important part in the island's history. The last big eruption took place in Spring 2021 and there are currently three active sites on the side of the mountain. On this visit I took the plunge and decided to go on a coach tour up the mountain - wary of the fact that the tour outline suggested the some might find the thinner air up there a bit difficult to deal with. Thankfully I needn't have worried - it all turned out to be fine. I was forunate in having an extremely knowledgeable guide who herself lived in a village on the side of Etna. She seemed to know the history of all the settlements on the seaward side of the volcano and could identify the different lava flows and their characteristics as our bus wound its way up towards the summit. We finally stopped at the Sylvestre crater and we had the opportunity to walk round that; for the more adventurous there was a chair life up to higher level. I passed on that one. This is a perfectly safe trip - uneven ground the only potential hazard and I felt priveleged to have had this close encounter with what one might call extreme nature! It's one thing reading about a volcano in the books and seeing pictures on TV - it's quite another to confront it directly - albeit with the aid of a bus!!

THE CATHEDRAL OF MONREALE - SICILY Just outside Palermo sitting on a hill above the Conca d'Oro (Golden Valley) is a magnificent cathedral founded by King William II of Sicily in 1174. It's part of Sicily's Arab-Norman heritage and I had the privelege to visit it a few days ago. Our coach wound its way up to the car park on the side of the hill and then it was a steep climb up a series of steps to a street in the village which led us up to cathedral square.

The front of the cathedral is impressive with a plainish elevation dominated by a pair of assymmetrical towers and a porch which is an 18th century addition. The large bronze doors were not open however, so we had to gain admittance through a side entrance which led directly to the corinthian columned nave. The nave and sanctuary is vast and what is immediately striking is the cycle of brilliant mosaics which cover over 70,000 square feet of surface. Perhaps not as striking as the ceiling of the Capella Palatina in Palermo - the one here still shows arabic influences. It was evidently restored after a fire in 1811.

In the ceiling apse of the sanctuary is another huge mosaic figure of a pantocrator Christ this time embracing his followers with outstretched embracing arms and hands.Above the thrones in the two side apses are a depiction of William II being crowned by Christ himself (how's that for a bit of aggrandisement) and in the other a scene showing Jesus presenting the cathedral to the Madonna. There are stories from the old and new testaments and many saints represented in the mosaics of the nave, but I couldn't find the one of St Thomas a Becket mentioned in my guide book, who had only been made a saint the year before the cathedral was founded.

To the side of the cathedral are the buildings of the connecting monastery with a wonderful cloister articulated by a series of arabic inspired columns - each with differently carved capitals - in the middle a 12th century fountain. Whilst this cathedral interior doesn't have the intimacy of the Capella Palatina - it's magnificence is another tribute to this wonderful island's Arab-Norman heritage and it should be on the list of anyone visiting Sicily.

SICILY'S ARAB-NORMAN HERITAGE I've recently had the opportunity to visit Sicily again and decided to visit it's capital, Palermo. The Norman castle (Castello dei Normanii) has been on my bucket list for ages and I knew it wouldn't disappoint. For me, Sicily more than most places I've visited in Italy, somehow manages to condense its colourful multicultural history into many of its important buildings. The Normans came to Sicily in 1071 and Count Roger (King Roger I), the conqueror of Sicily who would put it back on a Christian and westernised footing after 260 years of Arabic domination, chose to live in Palermo in a former arabic fortified palace on a high point above the port. A rebuild would be in the Norman "keep" style and one of the original four towers survives through to the present day with some of the interiors developed by Roger's immediate successors.

The Capella Palatina - the Palatine Chapel - was commissioned by King Roger II in 1129 and dedicated to St Peter in 1140. The interior decoration is truly amazing and combines latin, Byzantine and arabic elements to produce a jewel like, intimate space which takes the breath away today as it must have done at the time of its completion. Recycled classical columns help support the infrastructure of the chapel. Byzantine mosaic narratives cover the walls - mainly scenes from the Old and New Testaments - together with standing figures of various saints. All is overseen by the figure of Christ as pantocrator in the sanctuary apse, offering his blessing to the assembled congregation. Combined with these christian elements is a carved wooden hand-painted roof construction which is entirely arabic in origin - a "murquanas" of honeycomb vaulted form characteristic of vernacular buildings of the Abbasid Empire.

This Royal chapel today represents a wonderful synthesis of the cultural elements that characterised 12th century Palermo. Anyone with a smidgeon of interest in early mediveal architecture should make sure they travel to Sicily to see this amazing and wonderful interior.