Sicily

Rescue workers dug for a second day Saturday through mud and debris, searching for about 30 people believed caught in a mudslide that has killed at least 21 in Sicily. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he feared that the death toll from Italy's worst mudslides in a decade could rise to 50. Berlusconi is expected to survey the area by helicopter today, his office said. Rivers of mud unleashed by heavy rains flooded parts of Messina, a city in eastern Sicily, on Friday, sweeping away cars and collapsing buildings.

SICILY Slide show Photographer Warner LeMenager will look at Sicily's capital city, Palermo, and nearby Monreale, with its magnificent cathedral and cloister. When, where: 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Admission, info: Free. RSVP to (626) 449-3220. PACIFIC COAST TRAIL Slide show Shian Sung will offer tips for gear and planning and present a slide show on his five-month hike from the Mexican border to the Canadian border, a distance of 2,650 miles.

THE BEST WAY TO PALERMO From LAX, connecting service (change of planes) to Palermo, Italy, is available on Air France and Delta, connecting to Alitalia, Lufthansa and British. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $407. TELEPHONES To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 39 (country code for Italy) and the local number. WHERE TO STAY Hotel Villa Mokarta, 84A Via Macello, Salemi, 0924-98-33-15, www.mokarta.

There are at least three great reasons to see "Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome," the newly opened antiquities exhibition at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. A major sculpture anchors each of the show's three rooms, and together they tell an accelerating story of artistic and social power on the ancient Mediterranean island. Chronologically, the first is a straightforward male torso, his finely chiseled marble body quietly brimming with latent energy. Second comes a preening charioteer, physically just larger than life but expressively very much so. And third is a depiction of a minor god with major fertility on his mind, his powerful physicality an embodiment of the contortions of carnal lust, both corporeal and psychological.

Richard Sullivan and traveling companion Rhoda Lurie got a taste of the past and present during their trip to Sicily in June. The pair visited the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, where sculptures by contemporary Polish artist Igor Mitoraj are on display. In this photo, the Santa Monica resident juxtaposed one of Mitoraj's sculptures with the Temple of Concordia, built in the 4 th century BC. To Sullivan, the sculptures symbolized the ghosts of past residents of the ancient city.

Hotline for wildflower sites Regarding "Just Add Water and Apply a Gentle Heat," by Benoit LeBourgeois, Feb. 28: Another great way to follow wildflower blooms in the California deserts, as well as Central and Southern California, is to utilize the annual wildflower hotline operated by the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants. Twenty-four hours a day, March 5 through May, anyone can call the Theodore Payne Wildflower Hotline at (818) 768-3533 or http://www.

Let me wholeheartedly endorse Camille Cusumano's article "Embracing Sicily in Her Many Forms" (Feb. 18). After a lifetime of travel, Sicily is the one place we would return to without hesitation. The stay at the Dominican Palace in Taormina is a "happening." The food in Sicily is without peer and the people warm and welcoming. Bravo, Sicily. HAL CHENETZ Camarillo A few years ago, we drove around Sicily for 10 days and enjoyed it immensely. The Greek structures are more abundant and in better shape than those in Greece.

There are at least three great reasons to see "Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome," the newly opened antiquities exhibition at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. A major sculpture anchors each of the show's three rooms, and together they tell an accelerating story of artistic and social power on the ancient Mediterranean island. Chronologically, the first is a straightforward male torso, his finely chiseled marble body quietly brimming with latent energy. Second comes a preening charioteer, physically just larger than life but expressively very much so. And third is a depiction of a minor god with major fertility on his mind, his powerful physicality an embodiment of the contortions of carnal lust, both corporeal and psychological.

A centuries-old project to link mainland Italy to the island of Sicily took a major step forward Wednesday when an international consortium won a multibillion-dollar contract to build a bridge between them. It would be the longest suspension bridge in the world, with a central span measuring 2.1 miles, nearly three times longer than San Francisco's Golden Gate. Its two towers would be 1,257 feet high, taller than the Eiffel Tower.

In some parts of the wine world, when a talented wine maker forsakes the vineyard region of his birth for another, it is likely to be regarded as a veritable act of treason. That is the risk Franco Giacosa took when he left his native Alba, in the heart of Barolo Piedmont country, to become the chief wine maker at Duca di Salaparuta Winery in Sicily, a region better known for Marsala.

Super-sized exhibitions are becoming more common in art museums, and the next few months will see several among the notable new shows opening around town. Chronologically, here's a selection of what's coming up in art this spring, including three really big shows: "War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath" Annenberg Space for Photography, March 23-June 2 Some war photographs are indelibly printed in America's cultural memory, such as Joe Rosenthal's carefully choreographed 1945 picture of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima or Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut's image of a naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack in 1972 (both for the Associated Press)

Timberlake is in studio Justin Timberlake fans have had a whirlwind Thursday since the musician-actor dropped an intriguing tweet teasing that new information would be coming at 9:01 a.m. That hour arrived, and despite speculation that Timberlake's first new solo music would be arriving immediately, he sent instead another missive with similarly veiled data: "To whom it may concern...I think I'M READY! #JT2013 http://tmbr.lk/imready," he wrote, directing fans to a clip of himself entering a recording studio and walking through its hallways.

A terracotta head depicting the Greek god Hades that the J. Paul Getty Museum acquired in 1985 is being voluntarily sent back to Sicily, the museum has announced. Getty officials said that the museum has worked with officials from Sicily during the last two years to determine whether it would be appropriate to return the artifact. The museum said Thursday that the head's original location was the site of a sanctuary to the goddess Demeter in Sicily that was "clandestinely excavated" in the 1970s.

Richard Sullivan and traveling companion Rhoda Lurie got a taste of the past and present during their trip to Sicily in June. The pair visited the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, where sculptures by contemporary Polish artist Igor Mitoraj are on display. In this photo, the Santa Monica resident juxtaposed one of Mitoraj's sculptures with the Temple of Concordia, built in the 4 th century BC. To Sullivan, the sculptures symbolized the ghosts of past residents of the ancient city.

The J. Paul Getty Museum's iconic statue of Aphrodite, which became a symbol of American museums' involvement in the illicit antiquities trade, was unveiled in its new home Tuesday in the windswept Sicilian hill town of Aidone, marking an end to a controversy that has wracked the museum world for the last decade. A chaotic scrum of politicians, journalists, townspeople and two Getty officials crowded into the small museum in a former Capuchin monastery to see the 7-foot statue of limestone and marble, which the Getty bought in 1988 for $18 million despite signs that the statue had been recently looted and smuggled out of Italy.

The J. Paul Getty Museum's iconic statue of Aphrodite was quietly escorted back to Sicily by Italian police last week, ending a decades-long dispute over an object whose craftsmanship, importance and controversial origins have been likened to the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum. The 7-foot tall, 1,300-pound statue of limestone and marble was painstakingly taken off display at the Getty Villa and disassembled in December. Last week, it was locked in shipping crates with an Italian diplomatic seal and loaded aboard an Alitalia flight to Rome, where it arrived on Thursday.

In a stunning turn of events in the night skies over the Mediterranean late Thursday, U.S. Navy F-14 fighters intercepted an Egyptian airliner carrying the four Palestinian terrorists who hijacked an Italian cruise liner and murdered an elderly American tourist, then forced the plane to fly to a U.S. naval base in Sicily, the White House announced. There, the terrorists were surrounded by a combined force of U.S.

The great French critic André Bazin said of director Luchino Visconti that he filmed the Sicilian fishermen in "La Terra Trema" as if they were "tragic princes." In the 1963 epic "The Leopard," rapturously presented on a new Criterion Blu-ray, Visconti reverses the equation, pulling a family of 19th century aristocrats down to earth. Set in Sicily during the Risorgimento, the period that marked the end of Sicily's existence as an independent monarchy and the emergence of an Italian state, the movie exults in the last gasps of the nobility's opulence, even as it acknowledges and — ambivalently — endorses the necessity of its end. Perhaps the most overtly dialectical of Visconti's movies, "The Leopard" embodies the contradictions inherent in his identity.

SICILY Slide show Roberta Kritzia, tour designer and lecturer, will present "Sicily: The Jewel in the Crown. " When, where: 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena Admission, info: Free. RSVP to (626) 449-3220 SNOWSHOEING Workshop Learn about basic snowshoeing techniques and the required gear and clothing. When, where: 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Rancho Cucamonga REI, 12218 Foothill Blvd. Admission, info: Free.

  2006 Gulfi Nero d'Avola "Neroibleo" This time of year, I'm looking for a rich, full-bodied red at a good price, and this Nero d'Avola from Gulfi in Sicily fills the bill. The grape is one prized in Sicily, especially in the province of Ragusa (which is home, incidentally, to the irrepressible Inspector Salvo Montalbano of writer Andrea Camilleri's detective series and site of the Italian television series based on Camilleri's books.) The name Neroibleo refers to nero , or black, grapes grown on the slopes of Mt. Iblea.