Palermo, as described in The Leopard, was a town dominated by the impending presence of its convents: among them Casa Professa of the Jesuit Fathers with its nearby Church (XVI-XVIII cent.), where the Prince of Salina sends Father Pirrone to visit his brothers. Here however, more than the actual size of the building, it is the very rich Baroque style of the Church, one of the most important of the town, that bears the mark of an unmistakable identity, that of Palermo. Not far from it, in Via Maqueda, you should visit San Giuseppe dei Teatini's Church (XVII cent.) which has a chapel dedicated to Saint Giuseppe Maria Tomasi, an ancestor of the writer's. Going on along Via Maqueda you reach Via Ruggero Settimo, in the heart of the business centre, where you find the Libreria Flaccovio, the bookshop where Giuseppe Tomasi used to stop during his morning walks, halfway between the first Caffè where he would go (which no longer exists) and the second one, Bar Mazzara, where Tomasi would read and write in the second part of the morning, and which is now situated next to the actual place the writer used to attend. One last unique place in Palermo, where the experiences of the Prince of Lampedusa and those of the Prince of Salina interweave, remains to be visited, though slightly out of hand: the Capuchin Graveyard. The character of The Leopard imagines he will end his life there, the writer has his grave there. But the place has something even more peculiar, the Catacombs (XVI cent.), which preserve, perfectly mummified by means of an ancient as well as exclusive process and eternally kept with the appearance they had when alive, not less than eight thousand corpses belonging to inhabitants of Palermo, mainly of the higher classes, who lived between the XVII century and the first years of the twentieth century. It is also worth taking a trip just outside the town, to Bagheria (15 km from Palermo) to see Villa Filangeri di Cutò, that once belonged to Tomasi's family on his mother's side, also because in the territory of Bagheria in the eighteenth century many summer houses were built, each with its own history, which still boast their beauty, like Villa Palagonia, Villa Valguarnera, Villa Trabia, and, the first one coming from Palermo, Villa Cattolica, which today is the seat of a museum dedicated to Renato Guttuso.