Cefalù and the Sour Orange

Cefalù appears from around a bend on the coast road east of Palermo, its pastel walls creeping up the cliff sides of the La Rocca promontory. Every crate of lemons that left Palermo harbor was grown on a tree nobody was buying. For centuries the sour orange made no one rich—it just held up everything above it. Part II of The Citrus Kingdom heads east to Cefalù, past a friend who finds nothing remarkable in Sicilian villages and another who has ruled out medieval alleys on the grounds that they smell. An afternoon sketching under an orange tree, an amaro at dusk, and a walk up La Rocca in the wrong shoes lead to a Norman town built on Arab foundations—and then to the Bizzarria, a single Florentine tree that is citron on one side of the line and sour orange on the other, and never anything in between. Read the full article →