The Madonie speak English. The foreign community that chooses the mountain district around Palermo area widen. In Polizzi Generosa and Gratteri the request to buy a seasonal residence is in sensible rise. English, American, Australian people and also Italians that live out of Sicily are the most interested buyers of rural or old detached houses. It is a run to purchase houses to regain or to enlarge, so that the building commitee of Polizzi Generosa had to work overtime, to release new permits. In the last two years almost 20 building permits have been issued. "One hundred years ago my grand parents emigrated to America, today I'm emigrant in Polizzi Generosa."
That's what the American actor sicul-american Vincent Schiavelli, said the following day of his return in the native land of his parents (Ghost, Amadeus, Batman, Return, etc) passed away two years ago. A deep love led him to buy home and to live in Polizzi for the last period of his life. To appreciate the hazel-nut town are, overall, Americans.
In the States, Polizzi Generosa is known as the country of the Writer Giuseppe Borgese, and many tourist attendances look for the places described in his writing and in particular in his personal letters short time ago they have been collected and published in a book. The foreigners' attendances are on the increase coming from North Europe, as Swedish and Finns: some months ago the swedish television anchorman Rikard Westman has choosen Polizzi as a place to celebrate his marriage with Hana Victoria Prage. To invest there aren't only foreigns but also many italians that have choosen the Madonita town as their own residence. An important roman engineer, art and music scholar, has restored an old building in the historical centre under the "Trinity plaza". Those last years the tourist appeal of Polizzi has increased in an exponential manner- assert the Mayor Salvatore Glorioso- at corollary of our institutional activity of marketing, intended at the promotion of art treasures, of uncontaminated nature and of our artistic manufactures. "Tourists and visitors- says the first Town -dweller- are astonished about the charm of our uncontaminated nature and surprised by the millenary history of Polizzi.
It's extraordinary that, as in the rest of Italy, especially in Tuscany and Umbria, citizens of the Northern part of Europe and United States choose our town to live permanently or to relax for long periods. The internationalization has involved the entire territory, with more and more transalpine citizens that look for an healthy relax, far away from the city caos. A long term niche tourism, that finished to raise the qualitative standards in the entire Madonie. For instance Gratteri, small hilly town under lee of Cefalù, it seems like has become, for the Vip, the preferred oasis. Buyers are doctors, politicians, journalists, business men, many of them have boughit pieces of land and old rustic detached houses to restore. Some names: Gianni Riotta, Gianfranco Miccichè, Salvatore Cuffaro. Even Campofelice di Roccella, set between the sea and the mountain few Kilometres from Cefalù, considered the "Door of the Madonie's Mountain" is canalizing in the same direction of Polizzi. Few years ago Campofelice was the natural landing-place for people coming from the hinterland that wanted an house near by the sea, today to those it add English, Irish, Russian people that astonished by the mix of temperature, surrounding and typical good reception of our Madonita territory, have decided to buy estates either for investments or for permanent residence.
