The Leopard

Lampedusa maps the end of aristocratic Sicily onto the real island his own family ruled. As Garibaldi lands at Marsala in 1860 and the old order falls, Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, moves between his Palermo palace and the family's dusty inland estate of Donnafugata, drawn from the Tomasi towns of Palma di Montechiaro and Santa Margherita di Belice. The map is western Sicily, from the capital to the sun-struck interior.

Don Fabrizio

The Salina palace, Palermo

Palermo, 1860

The book opens in the prince's Palermo palace, at evening prayers, as news comes that Garibaldi has landed. Don Fabrizio, a huge, clever, melancholy aristocrat, feels the ground shifting under his class. The palace is the seat of a power that is about to become ornamental.

Part One

inspired by The prince's Palermo palace is drawn from the author's own family seat, the Palazzo Lampedusa in the old centre of Palermo (largely destroyed by wartime bombing). The pin marks a representative point in that historic quarter.

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Don Fabrizio

The city of Palermo

Palermo, 1860

Palermo, the Sicilian capital, is the stage for the old aristocracy's public life and for the plebiscite that ratifies the new Italian kingdom. Its churches, gardens and dust run through the book, and the prince dies here decades later in a hotel room by the sea. The city outlasts the world it belonged to.

Parts One and Seven

explicit Named in the book.

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