During our last lockdown, while scrolling on my Instagram feed I saw a picture that took my attention: colored yellow, white and blue houses that looked like Spanish or Tunisian. I liked at the point that I checked the geotag to understand where this lovely place was placed and, big surprise! It was located in Sicily!!
I couldn’t believe my eyes and I immediately googled the place: Borgo Parrini, between Palermo and Trapani, that was a real revelation for me! I added in my “Places to visit” list and I had the chance to go there a few months later, during my summer holidays.
But first, let me tell you more about this place: this small village near Partinico (also called the secret Barcelona) was founded in the XVII century by the Jesuits but it is now an almost abandoned village where only around 20 people still live. One of them was the entrepreneur Giuseppe Gaglio who, with the help of some other citizens decided to initiate a restoration of the abandoned houses to re-give life to his beloved village. He called Sicilian artists to recreate a Barcelona/Gaudi inspired village with mosaics, majolica and colored glass, bright facades and an explosion of colorful flowering plants.
The project started in the late 1990s and it took almost 25 years.
The life of the “Borgo” immediately changed since loads of tourists from all over the world started visiting this renovated village, pretty much loved for its colors and dreamy atmosphere.
It is more and more usual nowadays to use some “marketing ideas” to bring back to life many of the abandoned Italian villages and I must say that I think it is a great idea to restore our architectural and historical heritage and to give them a new life. And if this means also giving them a new life in terms of economy by bringing tourists and give space to more entrepreneurs, why not? Today in Borgo Parrini you can find a few pizzerias and a couple of bars and shops which was absolutely unthinkable a few decades earlier.
You can reach the village by car and it takes about an hour to visit (you can also enter the renovated houses for a few euros) and you can have a quick lunch/dinner and even enjoy the pomegranate “granita” handmade by a lovely resident who sells it on the main street leading to the center of the village!
It is better to go during the day to enjoy the bright colors and to take very nice pictures, but it seems that it is very suggestive also at night, coming back from a day at the beach or even in Christmas with its lovely decorations and a living nativity scene.
You can have an idea of how it looks like from my pictures but believe me, you’ll love it in real life!
I wore a vintage caftan found at Vinokilo in Milan with handmade turban (Mara Seyeyaram), a neoprene bag (Geometric Bag) and a pair of sequined flat sandals from Colors of California. Also, the lovely turban earrings come from Kano Sartoria Sociale in Sicily.
theladybugchronicles.wordpress.com 