Walking with The Leopard

Walking with The Leopard

The aim of this literary walk is to experience the world that Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa describes in The Leopard.  References of a historical and familial nature, as well as details of Giuseppe’s private life, will emerge from the juxtaposition of literary text, biographical details, and the places we come across in the course of the walk.

The itinerary retraces many of the places in Palermo’s historical centre provide the background to episodes in the novel.  It will  proceed through the city’s two seaside quarters, the Loggia and the Kalsa, linking the two houses of the writer: the house in via Lampedusa, in which Giuseppe was born, in 1896, and forced to leave after the bombing of ’43, and the house in via Butera, the last house in which he lived and the house in which he imagined his death.  The path between these two houses is rich with references to the literary work of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.  The narrative thread of the walk, which combines historical and biographical information with social customs, will be interspersed with readings of selected passages from Childhood Memories and The Leopard.