Latest news with #IlGattopardo
Forbes
08-05-2025
- Forbes
7 Remarkable And Unique Places To Stay In Italy
For the millions of travelers who visit each year, Italy offers thousands of hotels, B&Bs, agriturismos, and rental options ranging from from haute to humble, and reaching from the country's Alpine North to southernmost Sicily. If you want to look beyond traditional lodging for a memorable holiday in an unforgettable setting, here are seven options to check out. These remarkable and unique places to stay in Italy, which include rustic getaways, palace apartments, and even a Palladian villa, come with impressive histories, and often reasonable prices. San Fruttuoso, known for its historic abbey, is located near Portofino in Liguria. A bedroom in Casa de Mar. A few miles from jet-set favorite Portofino, San Fruttuoso offers a very different kind of Riviera experience. In this coastal hideaway, you'll find a photogenic, rustic fishing village, an exquisite tiny cove beach, and a significant medieval abbey (Abbazia di San Fruttuoso), dating from the 10th century. Reachable by hiking paths or boat (and regularly scheduled ferries from nearby towns like Camogli and Rapallo), San Fruttuoso, although busy during the day, becomes an escape-from-it-all retreat in the evening (the village has a population of less than 40). You can enjoy the tranquil setting in a restored two-bedroom, two-level fisherman's cottage called Casa de Mar with sea views, a terrace and tiny garden. The property is managed by FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano), a non-profit dedicated to preserving Italy's natural and cultural assets. Book through the The Landmark Trust, the U.K. organization devoted to the conservation and preservation of historic properties. The facade of the Palazzo Lanza Tomasi, which dates from the 17th century. The living area in Apartment 9, one of the deluxe lodging options in the Palazzo Lanza Tomasi. It has sweeping views of the Bay of Palermo. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the author of The Leopard, a novel focusing on the Sicilian aristocracy's decline at the time of Italy's unification, is among the best-selling books in Italian history. (Luchino Visconti directed the now iconic film, Il Gattopardo, and Netflix recently debuted a series, The Leopard, both based on the novel.) The writer, a Sicilian nobleman, lived the final years of his life in Palazzo Lanza Tomasi, a grand 17th-century landmark in the Kalsa district of central Palermo. He bequeathed the palazzo to his relative and adoptive son, Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, the Duke of Palma, who with his wife Nicoletta Polo, undertook the restoration of the historic structure. On the piano nobile floor there are rooms that serve as a museum to the famous writer's legacy containing his personal library and works, including the manuscript for Il Gattopardo. Apartments ranging in size from studios to two bedrooms, all with kitchens and some with sea views, are located on various floors of the palazzo and are available to book for self-catering holidays. Nicoletta Polo Lanza Tomasi holds highly regarded Sicilian cooking classes in the palazzo called 'A Day Cooking with the Duchess,' which includes a tour of Palermo's famous Il Capo food market and the preparation of a multi-course meal. The lunch in then served in the palazzo dining room. For more information: Palazzo Lanza Tomasi. The Blue Salon in the Palazzo Conte Federico. A bedroom in the Busuemi apartment. The Palazzo Conte Federico is one of Palermo's oldest dwellings, with a 12th century Arab-Norman tower reflecting a unique medieval architectural style blending Eastern and Western design elements. (The Normans not only conquered England in 1066, they came to rule Sicily in roughly the same time period after they seized power from the island's Muslim overlords.) Today, the palace is owned by Conte Alessandro Federico, whose family history also runs very deep; he is a descendant of the Sicilian ruler, Frederick II (1194-1250). Alessandro, his wife Alwine, and their sons live in the historic dwelling, which lies in the centro storico with many of Palermo's attractions within walking distance. Tours of the palace are given in Italian and English by a family member up to four times a day (except Wednesday). There's a lot to see: splendid architectural and decorative elements spanning centuries of Sicilian style, with striking marble staircases, a frescoed ballroom, antique tiled floors, chandeliers and fireplaces, and a rich assortment of period furniture. In one section of the palazzo are apartments that can be booked for holiday stays, ranging in size from studios to two-rooms with kitchenettes or kitchens; a number of them have balconies or terraces. For more information: Palazzo Conte Federico. Villa Saraceno was built in the mid-1500s by Andrea Palladio. A sitting room with frescoes. Andrea Palladio's villas, built for the Venetian nobility in the 1500s, are among Italy's most valuable Renaissance landmarks (they are listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site). While a number of these villas are open to the public for visits, Villa Saraceno, owned and restored by The Landmark Trust, allows you to stay on for a (minimum four-night) holiday. Built over a decade (1545-55), this splendid country retreat near Vicenza is about an hour's drive from Venice. A large three-story residence with eight bedrooms, sleeping 16, and six bathrooms, the villa is well-suited for a multi-generation family trip. Among the unique highlights are the frescoes found in the main entrance hall, sitting room and loggia. For more information: The Landmark Trust. Isola Bella The Delfino Suite, Ortensia. The Via Stretta apartment. The Borromeo Islands, a stunning archipelago floating majestically on the shimmery blue waters of Lake Maggiore, are an exceptional highlight of Italy's Lakes District. The best-known of the islands is Isola Bella, home to the lavishly baroque Palazzo Borromeo, which took four centuries to complete, and is now an important art museum. (The palazzo's elaborate Italian gardens are widely considered among the most beautiful in the world.) Until recently, a visit to Isola Bella meant a day trip, but Terre Borromeo, the company that oversees the archipelago with the Borromeo family, introduced a collection of apartments and suites for overnight (and longer) stays. Two of the dwellings, which can accommodate three to seven people, are located in the palazzo's former guest house, dating from the 1700s, where you'll also find Terre Borromeo's Delfino Restaurant. Other suites are found in nearby fishing cottages, refurbished in classic modern style. The properties were designed to take in the island's impressive views and include kitchens. For more information: Terre Borromeo. Casa Guidi, where the famous Victorian-era poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning once lived. The Brownings' former apartment is located in a 15th-century palazzo near the Pitti Palace in Florence. If you like to seek out places where literary greats once vacationed (e.g., Ernest Hemingways at the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees in Stresa, F. Scott Fitzgerald at the villa that's now the Hotel Belle-Rives in Juan-les-Pins), you'll want to consider a booking at Casa Guidi, the Florentine home of two of the 19th century's most celebrated writers, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (who famously wrote, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways'). A few steps from the Pitti Palace, the first-floor apartment in a historic 15th-century palazzo, spans ten rooms with three bedrooms accommodating up to five people. Once owned by the Browning Institute, the residence was transferred to Eton College in the early 1990s; Eton worked with the Landmark Trust to restore and refurbish it to reflect the way the rooms looked when the Brownings lived there. The couple made Casa Guidi their home in Florence for 14 years, a time when they produced some of their finest work. For more information: The Landmark Trust. The Masseria ls located outside Toritto, a town that lies between Bari and Matera. Located roughly midway between the Bari airport and Matera, one of southern Italy's most popular destinations, the Masseria Pilapalucci in Toritto resembles a small castle, with high stone walls, an ancient courtyard and a barrel-vaulted dining room that suggests a medieval banqueting hall. The 16th-century masseria is owned by Emilia D'Urso, a descendant of one of Toritto's most prominent families and founder of the Slow Food Presidium, 'Mandorla di Toritto,' which sustainably produces prized gourmet almonds. She manages the farm estate with her husband Domenico Viti, an agriculture professor, whose ancestors played a historic role in the nearby city of Altamura. The dining area, set for a cooking class. You're guaranteed a restful stay at the masseria (Italian for farm house), set amid hectares of almond and olive groves (Toritto is several miles away). The property includes a bed and breakfast with four double bedrooms and one family suite with two bedrooms, furnished with antiques and linens produced in Southern Italy. All the rooms open onto a large stone terrace, which can be used for dining or sunbathing. (There is also a plunge pool.) A lower-level terrace serves as the dining area in good weather. The entire masseria can be rented out for family or group vacations or special events. Renowned chef and cookbook author, Francesco Paldera, oversees the menu, where he reimagines classic Puglia dishes and presents new offerings. The menu changes daily depending on seasonal produce, and often includes the gourmet almonds produced by the estate, for example for pestos or a local version of the frangipane cake The Masseria also conducts cooking classes. For more information: Masseria Pilapalucci.
What's On
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- What's On
5 of the best restaurants in Dubai this weekend: New openings, menus & pop-ups
What's cooking this weekend? This… If your plans revolve around what's for lunch (and dinner), this week's lineup is worth making room for. We've rounded up five of the best restaurants in Dubai doing something a little different this weekend – think business lunches, new openings, and new menus. Whether you're in the mood to try something new or just looking for a solid go-to, here are 5 of the best restaurants in Dubai worth adding to your weekend group chat. Music Loves Company: The new café bar with live vibes What: Music Loves Company is a café by day, bar by night, and a live entertainment hotspot all in one. Expect everything from chilled coffee catch-ups to late-night comedy and gigs, with great food and drinks to match. Vibe: A laid-back, social space where music lovers, coffee enthusiasts, and comedy fans can hang out. Whether you're here for a relaxed afternoon or to catch a live show, the vibe is always lively. Menu: From strong coffee and fresh juices to hearty wraps, colourful salads, and sweet treats like stuffed cookies and banana bread. The cocktail list is fun, with drinks inspired by classic song lyrics. When: Open daily, with live events like comedy nights every Saturday from 8:30pm. Where: Expo City Dubai. @ wearemlc_ Khadak business lunch What: A midday breather done right. Inspired by India's everyday ritual of stopping to eat properly – no desk lunches here – Khadak's new business lunch is about slowing down without going off schedule. Vibe: Cool and calm. Menu: For Dhs98, you get a generous main, roti or rice, daal, and cucumber raita – simple and deeply satisfying. Dishes like Karare Kale Chaat, Guntur Butter Chicken, and Moong Daal Gosht hit that perfect lunch sweet spot. Optional desserts and non-alcoholic drinks are priced at Dhs15. When: Monday to Friday, 12-5pm Where: Khadak, Jumeirah 1, Dubai. @khadak_ae Il Gattopardo's new weekend lunch: Il Pranzo What: A laid-back yet luxe Italian lunch on Saturdays at Il Gattopardo. Start with fresh crudo, then dig into mains like Josper-grilled Tagliata Di Manzo or red mullet with artichokes. Plus, there's a Signature Spritz deal (Dhs150 for two hours) to keep the cocktails flowing. Vibe: Elegant with panoramic views, live music, and a cool, relaxed atmosphere – perfect for a weekend unwind. Menu: Three-course set menu (Dhs198), with a mix of seafood and Italian classics. Add the Spritz package for extra fun. When: Saturdays from 12pm. Where: Il Gattopardo, 51st floor, ICD Brookfield Place, Dubai. @ gattopardodubai Third Avenue's new weekend breakfast What: A no-rush, three-course breakfast served every Saturday and Sunday for Dhs89. Pick any three dishes from a menu of sweet and savoury favourites, plus a coffee or water to get you going. Vibe: Casual and easy-going with front-row seats to Burj Khalifa and Dubai Fountains. Menu: Eight options to mix and match – from Truffle Millefeuille to Zaatar & Labneh Pide, Eggs Shakshuka, and French Toast with Lotus Caramel. When: Every Saturday and Sunday, from 10am to 12pm. Where: Third Avenue, Downtown Dubai. @ thirdavenueboutique Ladurée's new pastry menu What: A new collection of refined pastries, each with its own personality. Vibe: Elegant, quiet luxury. Menu: Highlights include the golden vanilla flan with a caramelised puff base, a Jivara milk chocolate éclair with a touch of gold, and a minimalist tiramisu reimagined inside a delicate Opalys shell. When: Available now. Where: All Ladurée outlets across the UAE. Priced at Dhs55 at Dubai Mall tearoom and restaurant, and Dhs52 elsewhere. @ ladureeuae Images: Supplied/Instagram > Sign up for FREE to get exclusive updates that you are interested in
Euronews
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Euronews
The Leopard's lavish filming locations that will lure you to Sicily
The Leopard, a new series on streaming platform Netflix, is entrancing viewers with its sultry scenes of political and personal upheaval in 1860s Sicily. But alongside the swoon-worthy storylines, it's the sumptuous settings that are dazzling fans. If there was ever an onscreen drama readymade for set-jetting, it's this one. From an iconic Baroque square in Palermo to a lavish palazzo in Siracuse, here's where to find the real-life backdrops of The Leopard. The series - adapted from the Italian novel Il Gattopardo by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa - takes place as the revolutionary Garibaldi seizes Sicily during his efforts to unify Italy. Throughout the episodes, we see the city of Palermo preparing for and living through the Redshirt army's invasion. The Sicilian capital is a confection of curvaceous Baroque architecture - the ideal theatrical and sensual scenery for the show. Locations include the Quattro Canti, a crossroads with four curved facades adorned with statues and coats of arms, and Piazza Pretoria with its grandiose, sculpture-crammed fountain. The titular Leopard is Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina, whose time-honoured privileges and influence are existentially threatened by the new regime. His urban pad, Salina Palace, is the real-life Villa Valguarnera in Bagheria, just outside Palermo. The noble summer retreat and vast estate were designed in the 18th century, with a sweeping oval front court and Pompeian-style frescoed interiors. For full-immersion set-jetting, you can rent out the family home, currently presided over by Princess Vittoria Alliata who translated the Lord of the Rings into Italian at 16 years old. You and five other guests can spread out in 700 square metres of bedrooms, dining rooms, drawing rooms and a ballroom, plus 1,300 square metres of sunny-tiled terrace. If that's a little out of budget, visit Palazzo Comitini in the centre of Palermo instead. Now open to the public, it was built in the 18th century for Michele Gravina Cruillas, prince of Comitini. The principal public room, the Sala Martorana, is crowned by the splendid 'Triumph of Love' fresco of Gioacchino Martorana. Beneath the lavish ceiling, the Salina family dines in the Netflix series. The family's country escape is the fictional Donnafugata deep in rural Sicily. For the natural setting, the series uses the Calanchi del Cannizzola. This area of wild, sun-scorched Sicily near Catania is known as the island's desert. From the yellow grassy plains, dry ridged hillocks rise up forming a surreal, striking landscape. The scenes in the town centre of Donnafugata were filmed in Ortigia, an island just off mainland Siracuse and considered the city's historic quarter. Accessible by two bridges, it has an area of just one square kilometre but is rich with 17th, 18th and 19th-century buildings. The Palazzo Beneventano Del Bosco in Ortigia's main square is a creamy, Baroque delight which stands in for the exterior of the Salina palace of Donnafugata. Hikers will have to pay to climb up Mount Fuji using any of its four main paths starting from this summer. Under a new bill passed on Monday, an entry fee of ¥4,000 (€24.70) will be introduced in time for peak season. Japan's highest mountain has been struggling with overtourism. A dramatic increase in visitors is causing pollution and safety concerns. To help clean up the mountain and preserve its environment, authorities previously introduced a fee and a daily visitor cap along the most popular trail in 2024. Last summer, visitors to Mount Fuji had to pay ¥2,000 (€12.35) to hike up the Yoshida trail. This is the most popular ascent thanks to its easy access from Tokyo and the frequency of mountain huts en route offering accommodation and meals. Japan's Yamanashi prefectural government, which oversees hiking activities at the UNESCO World Heritage site, deemed it necessary to introduce the toll to protect the environment. It also implemented a 4,000 people per day limit on hikers using the Yoshida trail to ease congestion. Now, the fee to hike the iconic trail is doubling to ¥4,000 (€24.70), a charge which will also apply to three other routes that were previously free. Hikers will have to pay between July and September, which is the peak climbing season. Last year, authorities said the proceeds would be used to construct shelters along the path for use in the event of a volcanic eruption and to maintain the hiking route. Since 2014, climbers ascending the mountain via any of its trails have also been encouraged to voluntarily pay ¥1,000 (€6.20) per person towards the preservation of the site. The restrictions that were brought in last year proved to be effective, reducing the number of visitors ascending Mount Fuji from 221,322 in 2023 to 204,316, according to figures from Japan's environment ministry. Another measure brought in last year to curb overtourism in a nearby town has also proved effective. Fujikawaguchiko got so fed up with tourist crowds that they built a huge fence blocking the view they were coming for - Mount Fuji. The 20-metre long and 2.5-metre high fence covered with a black mesh prevented tourists from taking selfies with the landmark after incidents of littering, crossing dangerously through busy traffic, ignoring traffic lights and trespassing into private properties. The barrier was taken down in August as a precaution when a typhoon was forecast, but authorities decided not to reinstall it as it proved to have been effective. They warned, however, that it could be put back up if tourists return in large numbers.
Telegraph
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Leopard, Netflix review: an unashamedly glossy take on a classic novel
I haven't read Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's 1958 Italian novel Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), nor have I seen Luchino Visconti's Palme d'Or-winning film, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale. Obviously, that makes me a startling dunce, but I also suspect this may be the ideal position from which to approach Netflix's much-hoopla'd new TV adaptation. In the run-up to its launch, The Leopard has already garnered the sort of opprobrium reserved for much-loved great books that a haughty literati think can only be cheapened by thicko television. This, it hardly needs to be said, is almost always the opprobrium of the haven't-actually-watched-it. Having actually watched The Leopard, the first thing to be said about it is that in television, money talks. Netflix is reported to have spent around £40 million on making 19th-century Sicily look TripAdvisor-ready, and, my, does it show. You barely need to get involved in the political stirrings of Garibaldi's nascent revolution and its effect on the legacy and stability of the Prince of Salina and his family, to enjoy the backdrops. I try to steer clear of epithets involving the words sumptuous or lavish, but The Leopard is just ludicrously luxe. You can imagine it being played simultaneously on every screen in Currys as they show off the stunningly deep blacks in the latest range of Samsung OLEDs. That, of course, is not enough. You need more than fancy wallpaper to get you through six hours of drama, and in this regard The Leopard will divide. It is deliberately – sometimes infuriatingly – old school in its story-telling, happy to rinse out the melodrama where required like a chocolate box Western. The story is a familiar one from 19 th century Europe: the old regime of hereditary landowners living out the last vestiges of feudalism in obstinate luxury must face up to the industrial future. In the case of Il Gattopardo, that means the transfer of power in sunny Sicily from the old Bourbon aristocracy to the new Kingdom of Italy. Heretics, apostates and cutthroats – aka the unscrupulous liberal bourgeoisie – are coming to overthrow the conservative order. You don't have to be a geopolitical buff to note the parallels with current events, but to its credit The Leopard never lectures. Instead, the balance for director Tom Shankland (The Serpent) to strike is one between landscape and character. This is unashamedly a saga of the North and South or indeed the Foryste school. It is gunning for big scenes played against big backdrops amongst big families. At times it overreaches, with just too much ominous music presaging harsh times, too many candles and too much hat doffing, too many bells (literally) tolling. Visuals so sumptuous they make Downton Abbey look like Alan Clarke are wonderful, but they also contribute to a sense of TV trying to justify its budget. Relentless epic-ness can be like eating too many desserts. Against this, The Leopard finds subtlety in performance. Italy's Kim Rossi Stuart (Romanzo Criminale) takes the lead as the Prince of Salina and he has plainly been watching The Sopranos, because his 'principe' is a classic modern, male TV anti-hero. Caught between love for his nephew Tancredi – who is siding against the family with the revolution – and the need to push back against what he knows is the inevitable march of history, the prince's battle, which is the crux of the series, is mostly with himself. It is this that makes The Leopard a modern tale, in spite of all its lavish, sumptuous classical framing.
Telegraph
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Leopard, the tragic Prince and the sexiest pasta dish in literature
He was the author of probably the most loved and admired novel ever written in Italian, but when Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, died in 1957 at 60, he thought his life as a writer had ended in failure. His only completed novel, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), had been rejected by two publishing houses. In Places of My Infancy, his never-completed memoir, Lampedusa addresses the reader 'who won't exist'; he believed his words were doomed to remain unread forever. Just over a year after his death, another publisher stepped in and brought out his novel. During the next six months, The Leopard was reprinted 52 times. In 1959, it won the Strega Prize – Italy's top literary award. Louis Aragon hailed it as 'one of the great books of the century, one of the great books of always'. E M Forster wrote that 'reading and rereading it has made me realise how many ways there are of being alive'. In 1963, Luchino Visconti, another scion of the Italian nobility (whose forebears had governed Milan in the 15th century), turned the novel into a magnificent, Palme d'Or-winning film, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale. Now, more than 60 years later, The Leopard is to have a new life as a Netflix drama. Judging by the first two episodes, although the series honours the original both aesthetically (in its gorgeous Sicilian locations) and in the subtlety of the characterisation, it is more explicit than the novel about the political context, a sop to those viewers who don't know much about 19th-century Italian history. Released at a time when long-established political structures are being dismantled, Lampedusa's eloquent story has lost none of its relevance. The author was a prince, but he was not the Prince, the physically splendid specimen at the centre of his novel. Based loosely on Lampedusa's great-grandfather, the fictional Prince of Salina is in possession of palaces so immense, 'he used to say that a house of which one knew every room wasn't worth living in'. Priests defer to him, obsequious sentries wave his carriage past roadblocks. When he arrives at his country estate, a band plays and the whole town turns out to cheer. But it is 1860. There is an uprising in Palermo, first twinge of the Risorgimento, the Italian nationalist revolution. Garibaldi and his thousand volunteers land in Sicily, drive out the troops of the Bourbon monarchy, then stream northwards to make a new, united and democratic Italy. In the novel, these momentous events are offstage rumblings, but occasionally they impinge on the enclosed world of the Salina family. A sickening smell in the garden turns out to emanate from the corpse of a soldier. Worse, the Prince's beloved nephew Tancredi is marrying (for lust and money) a girl whose nouveau-riche father doesn't know which kind of boots to wear with a tailcoat, and whose grandfather was a peasant so uncouth, he was known as Papa Merda (a nickname best left untranslated). Lampedusa was born in 1896, nearly 40 years after the novel's main action, into a world drastically changed. In his memoir, he recalls exploring his family's immense homes, and feeling, as a small boy, that he was their 'absolute master'. By the time he was writing in 1955, the homes were gone. The palace in Palermo was wrecked by Allied bombs in 1945. (Lampedusa is said to have escaped on a bicycle, carrying his wife's furs and a painting by Bellini on his handlebars.) A villa by the sea was also bombed to rubble. The Villa Lampedusa, outside Palermo, was sold and became a nightclub. His mother's family's great house with 110 rooms, the model for the dreamily beautiful Donnafugata of the novel, was sold by his uncle in 1924 to pay debts, and subsequently used as a location for Visconti's film, but later wrecked by an earthquake. As with buildings, so with political institutions. The old order –almost unchanged in Sicily since the Middle Ages – had gone, replaced by the humdrum complexities of modern bureaucracy. In The Leopard, the Prince is invited to join the senate of the newly united Italy. What is a senate, he asks himself, 'an assembly of profiteers with big salaries', or, at best, 'a committee of civil administrators'? Why should he wish to join such a body? 'Low work for a Salina!' Dispossessed and marginalised by history, like his imagined Prince, Lampedusa withdrew into a world of books. David Gilmour, the author of a fine biography, tells how Lampedusa's life was dominated by two forceful women – his mother, with whom he travelled widely in the 1920s, and his wife, Licy, a Freudian psychoanalyst. They met in London and fell in love over the course of a long walk, during which they talked non-stop about Shakespeare. Licy recalled after his death that their happiest evenings were spent reading aloud to each other in Russian, French, German and Spanish and – especially – English. Lampedusa entered middle age in the post-war years, and his social life and daily routine were as bookish as his marriage. Every day, this lyrical celebrator of a lost domain of frescoed drawing rooms and formal gardens sparkling with fountains went out into the sad streets of bomb-blasted Palermo. His English translator describes him as 'a portly figure holding a bulky briefcase', following the same routine for years. First, to breakfast at a pasticceria, where he bought cakes and stowed them in that briefcase. Then, to a bookshop for more purchases and on to a new café beneath a skyscraper, where he spent the rest of the day eating his cakes and reading. Every month or so, he would spend a few days with his cousins, the Piccolo brothers, all almost as erudite as he was, in their villa by the sea. In 1954, Lucio Piccolo was awarded a prize for his poetry. Lampedusa went with him to the mainland for the ceremony. The trip unlocked something. Shortly afterwards, he began to write – at last – The Leopard. The novel was loved as soon as it was published, but it took longer for it to win the respect of the literati. Italy's intellectual life in the 1950s was dominated by Left-leaning voices advocating modernism. Alberto Moravia called Lampedusa's book a 'success for the Right'. Other critics sneered at his 'reactionary philosophy'. They were blinded by the novel's voluptuous celebrations of sensuality in all its forms. Here, for example, is a dish of pasta whose description is unparalleled as sexual metaphor: 'The burnished gold of the crusts, the fragrance of sugar and cinnamon exuded were but preludes to the delights from the interior when the knife broke the crust; first came a spice-laden haze, then chicken livers, hard boiled eggs, sliced ham, chicken and truffles in masses of piping hot, glistening macaroni, to which the meat juice gave an exquisite hue of suede... the food seemed so delicious because sensuality was circulating in the house.' As with pasta, so with the feel of a smooth silk cravat against a neck, or the languor of long, hot afternoons in the shaded rooms, hung with silk damask faded to silvery iridescence, of a semi-abandoned palace. Attentive readers soon saw the darkness behind the novel's surface glitter and the boldness of its structure. It has the amplitude of a great 19th-century novel, but its episodic narrative, its shifting viewpoints and all-pervasive irony mark it as a work of late modernism. Far from being an exercise in nostalgia, the book is a study of decadence. Even the Prince is aware that his grandeur is as hollow as rococo furniture eaten out by woodworm. He watches 'the ruin of his class without ever making, still less wanting to make, any move towards saving it'. The Leopard's dominant theme is not a lament for an obsolete way of life. Rather, it is a plangent meditation on mortality. The novel's ball scene was filmed by Visconti in a celebrated single shot, which passes through a marble hall, up a grand staircase, past flocks of young women, their crinolines spreading over damask upholstery, into the gilded ballroom where dancers twirl beneath chandeliers, past elder gentlemen talking politics in the library, into the chamber where a pair of lovers have found privacy, and on to the supper room where exhausted chaperones fall upon luscious cakes. Visconti was following Lampedusa, who describes the ball in the literary equivalent of a tracking shot, from the Prince's point of view. For readers, the scene is filtered through the character's world-weariness, his detachment from the milieu he once dominated, but which now seems to him to be inhabited by inbred, self-important has-beens. It smells of corruption. It leaves him longing for the cold clarity that he, an amateur astronomer, finds in contemplating the stars. Beautiful, elegiac, but also keen-eyed and sharply critical, The Leopard belongs to a small but distinguished literary genre. Its companions include The Radetzky March, Joseph Roth's 1932 novel chronicling the decline of the Austrian empire to 1914, and Miklós Bánffy's Transylvanian Trilogy, also written in the 1930s and combining an evocation of the aristocratic culture of pre-First World War Hungary with an indictment of the frivolity of the ruling class. The collapse of empires is a theme as old as the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC, but in The Leopard, Lampedusa gives it an entrancing melancholy that transcends the socio-political. In hovels and in palaces alike, all things must pass. All things, except perhaps great literature. The Leopard is on Netflix from March 5. Lucy Hughes-Hallett is the author of The Scapegoat: The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham
