Palermo, Italy

I suppose Palermo, the great bay of Palermo with its lofty promontories thrust out into the sea, so noble in outline and in mass, Monte Pellegrino on the west, and Monte Alfano on the east, the city set as it were in a natural amphitheatre between them on the shore of the blue jewel-like sea, its palaces and turrets and minarets seen against the dark background of far flung mountains, and surrounded by the riches of all wales, the Conca d'Oro, running up in an ever narrowing valley into the great bare hills, with its olive gardens, its orange and lemon groves, its fig trees and almonds, its palms and agraves and its infinite flowers: I suppose Palermo is one of the loveliest places in the world.
-Edward Hutton, Cities of Sicily (1926)