After wandering the streets of Palermo and the ruins and hills of western Sicily for two weeks I find myself climbing up to the mountain-top village of Enna in the middle of the country. Enna is an ancient fortress town that was never taken until the Arabs took it by sneaking in through the sewers after a nine-month siege.
Enna's Baroque cathedral is buried among its narrow Medieval streets on a hill, nothing unusual in a country full of Baroque churches. But this church is different. In the late 1700s and early 1800s a priest of this church, Canon Giuseppe Alessi, collected, among many other things, ancient coins, lots of them. Next to the cathedral, the Alessi Museum houses many items from his collections, including many of his coins according to the guide books. I now stand ready to enter that museum that I have come several thousand miles to visit....