I don’t design trips. I design transformations, for people who want to stop being tourists in Italy and start belonging there. Language, culture, identity, woven into one.
The nuns who lied to a bishop (and got away with it)
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Picture Palermo, year 1143. A convent. A bishop on his way for an important visit. And a garden that picked the worst possible moment to be completely, embarrassingly bare. No flowers. No fruit. Just naked branches in the middle of autumn, looking like they owed someone money. Now, the nuns of the Martorana monastery had two options. Option one: apologize, blush, blame the weather. Option two: commit a delicious act of fraud. They went with option two. Out came the almond paste. They shaped it into peaches, lemons, figs, prickly pears. They painted each one by hand until it looked sun-ripe and ready to eat. Then they hung their little forgeries on the bare branches and waited. The bishop arrived. He saw a garden bursting with fruit in November. He could not tell the difference between what God grew and what the nuns invented. That is the kind of skill you only get from people who take their craft a little too seriously. The good kind of too seriously. Today those fake fruits have a name: frutta martorana. Sicilians still make them by hand, still trick the eye, still taste like almonds and centuries. And here is the part nobody tells you. You do not need Sicilian blood to feel the pull of a place where nuns out-arted a bishop with sugar. You just need to be paying attention. Speaking of paying attention. I'm writing this from Turin, where I'm spending the summer, and I gave my northern friends some frutta martorana as a gift (check picture below). And while I am up here an idea keeps following me around. I am thinking of building an experience for the people who come to visit Sicily. A real one. You, your hands, a block of almond paste, and a Sicilian who refuses to let you do it the easy way. By the end you walk out holding a piece of fruit so convincing you could fool a bishop yourself. But I am not sold yet. I keep going back and forth. So I am asking you, plainly. Would you want that? Should I build it? Your opinion actually counts here, so hit reply and tell me. A presto, |
Fabiana Stringa
I don’t design trips. I design transformations, for people who want to stop being tourists in Italy and start belonging there. Language, culture, identity, woven into one.
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