See How the Wealthiest lived in Sicily

Buongiorno. Come step back in time with me. We're gonna go to one of Sicily's most extraordinary treasures, the Palazzo Biscari. It's located in the heart of Catania and built after the 1693 earthquake. The palazzo has grand ballrooms, breathtaking frescoes, and splendor you won't see anywhere else. It became home to one of Sicily's most influential and richest families. It's one of the most extraordinary places I've been to and a first here on You Me in Sicily. And later on, come to the market with me and see what I whipped up for dinner. We found a great parking spot at a parking lot. Believe it or not, there's a major parking lot really near here. So if you're coming, here are the arches and we are behind the Duomo which is over there. And we're gonna go now to Palazzo Biscari. Right as you approach the building, you can see the intricate Baroque works all over. And actually this is the wall over here of Catania. And right after the earthquake, immediately they asked, the Prince of Biscari asked for this to be constructed. Pope John Paul II came here and he stood there. Wow! There's the emblem and quite a dramatic entrance with these beautiful big doors. This has a little bit of the feel of the village in Pagheria. The whole style of a double entrance and then the main part over there and then the walls decorated beautifully. Imagine there are 600 rooms in this palace. 600 rooms and some of them are still being used by family members. Now we're gonna see just eight of them but they are spread to the left, to the right and to the back side all over this area. So impressive. Look at this. Everything is so beautiful. It's hard to believe that everything in this room, the ballroom, is original. There has never been any work done since the 1960s. Incredible. This is where the musicians were. It's incredible up top. This way, everyone down here has plenty of room to dance. Wow! That's a beautiful sofa but imagine the parties, the dances, the events that happen here. The whole feeling here is so royal, so exquisite and I just think about the people that lived here, the people who passed through here and experienced this. And yes, there are still descendants that live here all over in this area on the left, on the right. So, wow! So we dry the sea, we fulfill this area with rocks, sand, the ruins of the world and so the sea from here was gradually shifted to our left where there's the harbour. This entire area right outside the palazzo is of the 1950s. So imagine we are standing right on the city walls over the ships that were coming in and what better way to flex their muscle, the family to flex their muscle is the first thing that people see is this incredible facade. And this is where the Pope stepped out and blessed the people of Catania. Oh my goodness, look at this staircase. If you think about that period, people were short but these bedrooms are pretty spacious. The last princess that lived here died in 1997, so pretty recent. Now listen to this about this rooms over here. This room led down to the kitchen, the only kitchen that existed here where only servants were allowed. And the next room is where the dining room is. But everything in here has a purpose. So for instance, all of this, these are mirrors. Up here they would put the candles and the mirrors would bounce off of each other. During the day, light would come in and again bounce off of each other. Everything had a purpose. Now the other reason for this door is that if she had a lover, he could just escape right through there. And of course, the servants would not say a word. One of the most well-deserved rooms is this one right here with 2,000-year-old rocks from the Roman times. I imagine that this was used as a dining room until the 90s. Now that's a bathtub. The Biscotti family married with the Paterno, Castello and also Moncado family and they all sort of intermarried. And right now there's 80 family members still living here and one of them, Ruggero Moncado, just left to go to Lipari. If I had known earlier that he was here, I would have stopped him. Anyway, so the nobility family still exists here. How cool is that? If you think about it, all these dukes, barons, they were initially coming from Spain and then they became Sicilian, stayed here and kept marrying each other, really, and other family members to keep the riches in the family. When he was just 30 years old, he married his own niece of 12 years old. And that's not all. What's his name again? Agatino She had the first child when she was just 12 years old, so immediately after the marriage, and the last one at 30 years old. And since she had 15 children, that means that she had a child per year or anyway two pregnancies per year. And she will die at 30 years old because of complications of giving birth to so many children. But Agatino decided to marry his own niece because by doing so, he kept all the money, all the lands, all the properties within the same family. And so this strengthened the Paterno Castello, making them one of the most powerful, one of the most influential families, not only here in Catania, but of all Sicily. The only one who at the time, and we are by the end of the 16th, early 17th century, who at the time was higher than them was the king, the Spanish king. At the time, Sicily was under the Spanish domination. So except for the king, who held the highest position, immediately under, at least here in Sicily, there was the Paterno Castello family. So this really gives you the idea of the importance and the prestige of this family. Who were the Biscari family and why did they come here? They were a family of landowners. They had lands a little bit everywhere in Sicily. The most important one was the Biscari land from which the family took its name, which is close to Ragusa. So we are in the interland of Sicily, two hours more or less from Catania, where they produced silk. So they made money based on this business until they became very, very rich and very, very important. Why did they pick Catania? Because it was on the sea, so it was strategic for trades. They were also not just producing silk, but also exported silk. So it was the smart choice, you know, to just have a palace right on the sea. Grazie mille. Thank you. How is it working here in the palace? It's amazing. It's amazing. I really love it. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much. During this earthquake, there was just a very small part of the city at the time that didn't fall down. That is to say, these city walls. The city walls, as I said, they resisted the earthquake. That's why two years later, in 1695, the Paderno Castello family, Prince of Biscari, they thought that building their home right on these city walls was the best choice ever, because that meant building a non-seismic house, a safe house, capable to resist two other earthquakes. This explains why the level where we are walking on, it's a little bit higher compared to the one on the street, which is lower. If you're interested in our books, our tours, our merchandise, anything about what we do for You, Me & Sicily. You, Me & Sicily merch. Please go to www.youmeandsicily.com and you will be amazed at the website. Anything that you want about Sicily and our operation is there, from private tours, to group tours, from great merch, as she said, to my books. www.youmeandsicily.com Across from the main palazzo are all these rooms where the other family members lived. And this is Piazza del Camastra, the Duke of Camastra, who's responsible for the rebuilding of a lot of Catania after the 1693 earthquake. It is 99, okay, let's call it 100 degrees today in Sicily. It is steaming. Listen, there's a couple more things I want to say before we move on to the next segment and that is that the Palazzo Obiskeri is still being used for events, for ceremonies, for weddings, also movie scenes like The Godfather, The Leopard on Netflix and other Italian movies and TV series. The second thing I want to say is that the person that the Prince Obiskeri asked for permission to build that beautiful palazzo is the Duke of Camastra, the same guy who rebuilt, he was the architect, much of the city of Catania after the 1693 earthquake. He was also, by the way, the one who rebuilt Santo Stefano di Camastra, that video we had a few weeks ago. And the third thing I wanted to say, probably should be the first thing, is grazie mille to my friend Silvio for coming with me. I gotta tell you, the vibe in that palazzo with the classical music going, oh my gosh, you felt like you were a princess, a baroness, a something, but it was very, very special. I especially liked our guide who was very knowledgeable. All right, let's go see what's at the market and what I'm gonna cook for dinner because Alfred is in the United States. There's Mario and look at the watermelons, wow. C'è cacuzza, let's go see the cacuzza and right now it's the bean period and there's my favorite, cetrangalo, and the tomatoes, oh my goodness. One of the favorite things for people is when I take them over here into the farm and you can see what the local goodies are growing. This is zucchini for sure, but this is one of my stops on my daily life here in Sicily. Get my fresh fruits and vegetables. Oh, the other day I brought people here and they saw an artichoke for the first time. Yep, this is what artichoke, it's not artichoke season right now, but that's the remainder. Melanzane, they're small, small, small because we're just getting started with the season and here's another tomato plant. This, by the way, in the winter, they're cauliflower or broccoli or one of the winter vegetables and this is the garden of cacuzza. Buongiorno, let's see. This is a baby pomegranate. Okay, let's see. Ah, here they are, still baby though. There's the cacuzza and this is tenedumi. You can make pasta with that. They're still small, so we'll have to come back when they're a little bit bigger. Melanzane, melanzane, as far as your eye can go. So when we talk about zero kilometer food, this is what I'm saying. This is one of the places, one of the shops, which is straight ahead and they pick the vegetables or the fruits. It goes from here to the shop and to my house in less than a mile and I call it a shop, but as you can see, it's right over here. Family owned, family one. This is what it looks like when it's ready. This is what you call a Sicilian cucumber. Picked right off the tree. These are a few of the other things I bought. Some ginger, a wild garlic, their red pepper. These tomatoes from Bacchino are so, so smelling good. Some red onions, limone, and these are not limes, these are lemon. Melone, gella, lattuga, which is part of my always. A thing of parsley, a bunch of parsley and some zucchini. And now I'm having some tea. This is gunpowder green tea from Japan. This is just the base of my salad. The cucumbers, red peppers, tomatoes, radicchio, arugula, a little bit of cabbage. And now I'm going to make a stir fry with some shrimp, mushrooms, and here is the lettuce I'm going to add. These guys are not doing too, too great, but I'm definitely going to get a red pepper, peperoncino, some basilico, and I bought some fresh parsley, prezzemolo, but the little guys are growing. With this heat 96, are you kidding? Those are wild greens, mushrooms, and I'm going to add the shrimp and also the garlic, some more parsley. There's your shrimp. And then I add a little bit of turmeric. I'm going to add some paprika and let's see a little bit of mint. I'm also adding this amazing sea salt with garlic from my friend Lou and Jim. Grazie mille. This is shaping out to be quite a delicious piece. Of course, I always put some hot pepper flakes because, you know, I'm a spicy kind of girl and I think I'm going to put some zucchini spaghetti in here too. See this right here? It's called a magic peeler and it has been magical in my life. Let me tell you, take it like this and you guys call it zulus or what do you call it? Spiral zucchini or whatever, but this, when I discovered this in 2017, it changed my culinary life forever. I use it very often and, you know, you can season it with whatever. I'm going to drizzle a little bit of olive oil in here, which I forgot to put at the beginning. And let's see what else. Oh, I'm going to add some dry oregano. Let me show you how that looks. This is a package of dried oregano. So I'm going to put a little bit more on there and it's going to be a delicious and nutritious and very flavorful meal. A little olive oil, a little paprika, paprika from Hungary, and we're off to the races. This will be my second part of my meal. The first part is usually the salad. Salad dressing, the only way I do it. Olive oil, limone, and I'm not going to put any salt because there's plenty of salt in my stir fry. You know, Alfred always laughs at me when I eat my ginormous salads because I'm like, oh my God, it's so delicious. This tomato really is very delicious. It's sweet. This pepper is sweet. This radicchio is very bitter, like very bitter. This arugula is very flavorful. The lemon and olive oil just add a deliciousness. So yeah, I love my salad. Anyway, that's it for today. Hope you enjoyed this video. What did you think of Palazzo Biscotti? Uh, we'll see you next week. I don't know what I'm going to do. It'll be a nice surprise. Ti volio bene. Sub bandedica. Ciao.