A Sicilian Village 
DOUBLET WINDOWS 
ried to the island and 
brought to so high a' 
pitch, only to see it over¬ 
thrown by the eager com¬ 
mercial spirit and military 
resourcefulness of the 
Carthagenians. The 
sturdier Roman, sweep¬ 
ing ruthlessly aside the 
sometime conquerors 
from oversea, in his turn 
adapts the old Greek 
buildings to his uses or 
provides himself with 
new ones built after the 
manner of his people, the 
remains whereof are not 
far to seek even to-day. 
The Saracenic civiliza¬ 
tion that later overspread 
the island, revitalized as 
it was by the coming of 
the hardy Norman con¬ 
querors, has left for us at 
Palermo and Monreale 
monuments of incompar¬ 
able splendor and of an interest borne of the 
singular interweaving of two manners of 
design, two systems of construction, utterly 
unlike in origin, yet, as the event has proved, 
capable of being blended in a strangely har¬ 
monious totality. But for records of the 
days after the Norman sway had ceased we 
turn to Taormina. 
A BALCONY 
Along the main street 
the houses speak of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries, the time when 
the village prospered 
greatly. Their doorways, 
curiously French in detail, 
remind one by the sec¬ 
tions of their mouldings 
of work along the Loire. 
What influence has 
brought about this like¬ 
ness it might be hard to 
trace, for the French oc¬ 
cupation of the village 
did not take place till 
1676. Traversing the 
main street one comes at 
last to the Palazzo Car- 
vayo, now the town hall. 
I ts Doublet Windows , 
divided by astonishingly 
slender shafts show an in¬ 
teresting use of blocks of 
black lava, in one as an 
unmoulded label course, 
in the other as a band of mosaic beneath the 
sill. It is, however, to the cloister of the 
Convent of S. Caterina, on the slope of the 
hill just below the village that we must go if 
we wish to see the best examples of lava 
work. Here about the doorways square 
blocks of this material are let into a freestone 
of light color, while a broad band of it en- 
TAORMINA 
TAORMINA 
