The telephone call from Palermo was rather surprising: a lady named Domitilla Alessi, who owned a small publishing house in that city, commissioned me to do a photographic essay about the journey to Sicily that Goethe, the German poet, had done two centuries earlier. I had read Goethe's diary, but had myself never been in Sicily - which were two good reasons for accepting the job. What worried me, was that I couldn't imagine that there would be much left of what Goethe had described.

I was mistaken. Be it on account of deep-rooted poverty or of mafia problems, Sicily is one of the least modernized, if not best preserved parts of Europe. All I had to do was to learn Goethe's diary almost by heart, and to follow his itinerary: many of the landmarks he has mentioned are still to be seen, only a little more decayed than in his description. The most amusing recognition was when I stepped into a tiny osteria along the road, asking for some caffè, and found myself in front of a huge wooden table, that may have been standing there for centuries, and on which were laid out rows of home made pasta , neatly lined up, exactly as in Goethe's report!