Fodor's Expert Review Palma di Montechiaro

Donnafugata, the country seat of the Salina family in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard, is a fictional place, but it's a fusion of Santa Margherita del Belice (where the Tomasi di Lampedusa palace was until destroyed by a 1968 earthquake) and the Chiesa Madre and Benedictine Convent in Palma di Montecchiaro. The town was founded in the 17th century by Tomasi di Lampedusa’s ancestors, at a time when Spain, who ruled Sicily, needed the island to be its main source of wheat. As rural Sicily was beset with banditry, and considered far too dangerous for individual families to live in isolated farmhouses, the Crown encouraged landowners to found new towns, where peasants could live in relative safety, heading out to the fields each day and returning at night, to live cheek-to-cheek with their animals in one story houses. These days it is a rather grim, dilapidated-looking place, but for fans of The Leopard, a visit to the convent to buy almond cookies from one of the four remaining nuns is an eerie experience, offering a brief glimpse of the hidden lives that have changed little in centuries.