Searching for it as if groping

6 Days / 5 Nights

1st day -  Palermo-Segesta

Gathering of participants and departure from the designated airport of Palermo. Meeting with our guide and accommodation on the coach and departure for Segesta. We will immerse ourselves among the stones of the classical world, where we will discover the origins of the religious sense of the Sicilian people... the religious sense as a constant desire to see the face of God becomes a simple and fascinating task among the stones crossed by the Elymian, Phoenician and Greek myths . Visit the ancient city of Elyma with the majestic Doric Temple and the Amphitheatre. At the Segesta theater readings of selected pieces. Lunch in a typical restaurant.

Transfer to the hotel and accommodation in the reserved rooms. Meeting with the guide for the presentation of the tour. Dinner and overnight stay.

2 day– Mozia-Saline-Erice

After breakfast we will continue our journey on the island of Mozia, a place where some of the most important Phoenician remains in the Mediterranean are concentrated. Mozia is located in the suggestive scenery of the Saline di Marsala. Lunch inside the Saline.

Panoramic tour of the Marsala Saline and the Trapani Saline. From the Erice Venus to Mary... we continue to Erice, a mythological and sacred city for the classical world. Walk through the streets of the characteristic medieval center with a visit to the Cathedral and free time for shopping (tasting of Erice's typical almond sweets).

Transfer to hotel, dinner and overnight stay

3 day– Palermo

“… It will certainly happen that someone will come to say words like flowers for this Sicily”

Breakfast at the hotel and departure for Palermo

Panoramic tour and guided tour of the city. In the cathedral, the royal tomb of Frederick II and the chapel which houses the relics of Santa Rosalia... beloved patroness of the city; the Cathedral of Palermo welcomes the remains of the Blessed Don Pino Puglisi, and it will be his footsteps that we will follow throughout the day.

From the pain of Palermo a flower is born... the flower of Christian charity... Father Pino Puglisi paid with his life for being a man and a priest to the fullest, loving even his executioner with a smile. We will pray before the Blessed, accompanied by some passages taken from a theatrical work, and we will find the true key to understanding this holy and heroic story, which will lead to the conversion of the murderer...

“I only remember your smile against your raised arm”

Walk through the popular alleys of the market of Arab origin Ballarò, continuation to Quattro Canti of the city.

Lunch in a typical restaurant.

In the afternoon in the popular neighborhood of Brancaccio visit the place of Don Pino's martyrdom and the parish San Gaetano Maria del Divino Amore. Meeting with a witness who will tell us about his personal experience of friendship with Don Pino Puglisi.

4th day - Salemi-Agrigento

 After breakfast at the hotel, departure for Agrigento. On the route to get to Agrigento we will stop at the medieval city of Salemi with the charm of its historic center, and in particular the Ritual Bread Museum. The making of bread for ritual purposes is an ancient art, traceable to the Hellenic period and connected to the celebration of the agricultural divinity Demeter who, according to mythology, taught man the art of bread-making.

“Bread – explained Giuseppe Pitrè – is the grace of God par excellence”, in Salemi the rituality of processing within shapes and geometries of rare beauty and refinement takes on a strong devotional aspect of the Sicilian people.

Lunch in a typical restaurant

“Akragas… the most beautiful city of mortals”, is how Pindar defined it. The Valley of the Temples bears witness to this: imposing and at the same time elegant, the Doric temples of Agrigento are unique in the world because they were made not in the usual marble, but in sandstone tuff, made up of fragments of shells that shine like gold in the sun. The Temples of Agrigento, an imposing sign of the city's power, tell of the nostalgia for an unspeakable distance and the desire for something "other"

Return to hotel, dinner and overnight.

5th day -Cefalù-Gibilmanna

Lunch in a typical restaurant

Lunch in a typical restaurant

We will continue with the visit of Cefalù: through the streets of the historic center the Norman Cathedral with Christ Pantocrator is the first tangible sign for the Christian people of the Sicilian Reconquista carried out by the Normans after approximately 250 years without a bell ringing. Transfer to hotel, dinner and overnight stay.

6th day - Palermo-Monreale

Breakfast at the hotel and departure for Palermo. The Palermo of this last day will be unusual, but like another flower of faith, we will meet the lay missionary Biagio Conte and the Mission of Hope and Charity. The charism of the Mission is welcoming and giving oneself to the new poor of the cities or to all those who remain behind and on the margins of this city: they are called tramps, vagabonds, young drifters, alcoholics, ex-convicts, separated people, prostitutes, refugees, immigrants, but in the Mission they are all brother and sister without any distinction. The Mission currently welcomes and assists approximately 800 people in three communities.

Lunch in a typical restaurant.

Guided tour of the majestic Cathedral of Monreale with the centrality of Christ Pantocrator and its very valuable mosaics depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments... "The Church is Christocentric. And not just the Church! The life of humanity is Christocentric! Love is Christocentric, this is important, in every era, always.” Cit. John Paul II

What we will visit

  • Palermo
  • Monreale
  • Segesta
  • Mozia
  • Saline
  • Erice
  • Salemi
  • Agrigento
  • Cefalù
  • Gibilmanna
  • Monreale

When

October-April

For more information