The bus ride up and down Mount Pellegrino provides some great views over Palmero. To get the most detail, expand the pictures in the gallery and the videos to full size.
We had a few minutes to stop at the lookout to take some pictures of the statue of Santa Rosalia and the bird’s eye view of Palermo. usually a video gives a better feeling of the depth of of the valley.
A gallery of pictures looking out over the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
You may have noticed a building on the top of Mount Pellegrino that could be a castle or a hotel. It is not the Sanctuary of Santa Rosalia which is hidden farther back toward the centre of the mountain. This is what the internet has to say about the building.
“The building was commissioned by Cavaliere Michele Utveggio and designed by Giovanni Battista Santangelo. Viewed as a fancy or folly building, the residence soon became a luxury hotel known as the Grand Hotel Utveggio. It was closed during the Second World War. In 1984, Sicily’s regional government bought and refurbished the structure to install a business management school under the direction of CERISDI, the centro ricerche e studi direzionali, which closed in 2016. In January 2024 Sicily’s regional council approved an expenditure of €5,900,000 for refitting the structure as a conference centre.”
Back down near sea level, the next post will show some views of the streets of Palermo as seen from the bus.
Each post introduces me to another little corner of the world Doug, and I love the look of that hotel. Wonder how it looks like inside and how it would be to stay there!