Hotel Orientale

The unreliable author of our guide book calls Palermo "fantastic" and "ravishing" but fails to mention the trash. It's a touchy subject. Go online, and you'll find that things break down between people who are puzzled by Palermo's overflowing dumpsters and people who are offended by those people. I agree that it's not polite for a tourist to complain about the garbage, but it turns out the trash situation gives you some insight into how Palermo works. To misquote Clausewitz, trash is the continuation of Sicilian politics by other means. When we visited in 2009, Palermo was having a trash crisis. The company that the city contracted to collect the trash was almost bankrupt. Add to that an ongoing labor dispute, plus the usual problems with mismanagement and corruption, and the result was a ton of garbage piled up in the streets. Palermo is all chaos and dysfunction. A noisy, rowdy, strung out city that's easy to fall in love with. It's a place that makes every other place seem too quiet and uptight by comparison. The streets are crowded with pedestrians and buzz with motor scooters. The traffic cops ride huge motorcycles and wear skintight pants and aviator shades and look like they stepped out of a 'Tom of Finland' comic book. We stayed here, at the Orientale. It was near the train station, a hotel right out of a Graham Greene novel. Originally an 18th century palazzo, it had become a teetering pile of hotel rooms that overlooked a steep courtyard crammed with parked cars. The Orientale was all marble and dark corners, and ghosts and guests mingling in equal numbers. The old lady at the front desk had a noble bearing and sad eyes. She handed us a key attached to a heavy brass fob. The sitting room was full of French tourists sipping beer beneath a fresco: robed angels and chubby putti peeling slowly off the ceiling. We walked up stairs and down corridors looking for our room. Past rooms where Cold War spies were holed up; or where dowager contessas who'd been swindled out of their fortunes by Italian gigolos spent their days reading Russian novels. Or maybe the place was just full of budget tourists like us. Whatever. I wish I could go back.

This was a great hotel full of faded charm in a beautiful courtyard building, now appears to be closed which is a great loss, not many like this left these days. Stayed here about three years ago and had two different rooms, both gorgeous and the owners were really charming and very helpful when we got mugged, calling the police and doing everything they could to sort things out. Hope it reopens one day although saw signs of bad renovation in other parts of the building so could end up going the same way as many other lovely old hotels trying to please a globalised clientele. Will be missed.

I had made reservations for Hotel Orientale on April 8,2015, to arrive Sept. 15,2015. Four days before flying to Palermo, I received an email stating my reservation was cancelled due to death of the owner. After reading this for the third time ,I wondered if the owner was the sole employee. At such short notice I had to accept whatever rooms I could get for five nights; they were not pleasant. This was the beginning of a month long trip to Italy that ended much better than it began. Did other people get reservations cancelled ?