In the Back Streets of Sicily

On the 50th anniversary of The Godfather, echos of Francis Coppola's masterpiece were around every corner of Castelmola.

Castelmola is an outlier, high above the oceans of Sicily. Above Taormina. The name derives from something like castle + tooth. There once was a huge castle here, impervious to enemies…

In these ancient villages of Sicily, my thoughts wandered to scenes from Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather. Nothing literal, just the ambiance, the voices, the textur

We walked up the narrow winding road that may see an occasional car, but we saw none. The town unfolded gradually, a sign, a shop… then the complexity of streets diverging into alleys that wound between the ancient residences. There was a sense of a dense population, particularly as the town is perched on the very top of a vertiginous rocky mountain. But we heard sounds of people more than we saw them.

Photographs and video by Paul G Ryan

Coppola filmed parts of The Godfather here, for the scenes of early Sicily. Even now, there were few evidences of otherwise.

We stopped at a cafe for a cappuccino. The sound of animated Italian voices drew us to the roadside porch. Two ladies and two truck drivers. A trash truck and a vegetable truck were performing a mechanized dance of mutual displacement on the narrow corner street.

a video:

I thought that, in few places, would such traffic cooperation take place.