Article

For visitors from Northern Europe making the Grand Tour during the 18th and 19th centuries, the encounter with the exuberant vegetation of Sicily had almost as great an impact, emotionally and aesthetically, as did the sight of the fallen temples of Magna Graecia. The average modern tourist tramps the excavation sites with little information offered that might enable him to share the experience of his predecessors. Over twenty-five years in the making, and fruit of a collaboration between an American writer living in Sicily and an American botanical illustrator, the idea for "The Garlands of the Gods" has evolved from creating a simple tool for identifying the most common wildflowers growing among the ruins, to including a broader look at these plants in mythological, literary and historical terms, and a brief consideration of what the flower-decked remnants of the classical world meant to visitors over the last centuries. The entire project was published in Palermo in December of 2018 as a light and easily transportable volume that examines some one hundred plants together with an introduction to seven of the most frequented sites. It is the hope of the authors that their efforts may eventually provide some small stimulus towards the establishment of a program for the promotion of botanical tourism