The Sicilian Connection

One branch of Lisa's family comes from a small town in Sicily, San Fratello. It's an amazing place that distills many of the elements of Sicilian culture and history. Because of its location in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily was invaded repeatedly, by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Punics, the Romans, the Vandals, the Arabs, the Normans, the Spanish and the Italians. (I'm leaving out a few) San Fratello experienced many of these waves of conquest, and, though it's not one of the official historic sites in Sicily, history is clearly recorded in the buildings that exist today and the stones that remain of the civilizations of the past.

We visited San Fratello in April of 2013, in search not of the city's history but of Lisa's roots. Amazingly, we found what we were looking for.

San Fratello