Sicily

GUY DE MAUPASSANT, the master of the nineteenth-century French short story, visited Sicily in the spring of 1885 and wrote his travel memoir as a tribute to the art, architecture, people and landscape of this Mediterranean island. He provides a vivid account of this "strange and divine museum of architecture," where Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arab, and Norman influences combine to produce monuments of beauty and a unique Sicilian style. In a land then little touched by modern transportation, ...