Museo de Marionettes

We have been having such great time travelling across Sicilia and visiting places that I have had almost no time updating this blog with our little adventure. Beside that, the Internet at the hotels is as slow as an old lady when it comes to uploading pictures - it throws me in misery!

However, as a person highly interested in puppet making (although I make them out of fabric and paper) I've been wanting to write a post about this gorgeous and one of a kind Puppet Museum we saw in Palermo. It's called Museo Internazionale delle Marionette and it houses about 4.ooo puppets, marionettes, glove-puppets, shadow figures, items of scenery and posters.

The rooms of the museum generously welcomed the characters of puppet theatres of many countries so here we saw traditional marionettes from Northern Italy, other European countries and other continents. There were Greek and Turkish shadow figures, African marionettes from Mali, Congo and Benin, Vietnamese water marionettes, Japanese, Chinese and Indian shadows, marionettes and rod puppets.

My favourite:

The Old Man

The Policeman

The Thief

The Sicilian Pupi Theatre is very popular and active in Italy and we could see ticket stands for it everywhere. We also encountered several workshops and the puppet makers were so generous to let us have a peek inside and shoot some pictures. The only thing I grieve about the most is that I didn't buy myself Pinnochio. I kept postponing doing that so on the final day I couldn't find any shops that sold it. We have a couple of days left here so I'm still hopeful.