By KO in Infrastructure — 21 Aug 2025

Parking lot

Turns out that the square on Via Guiseppe Mario Puglia wasn't always a gorgeous music filled space with a restaurant and bar. It took concerted effort. And what a result!

I was very fortunate to spend time in (on?) Sicily last year. An absolutely magnificent place that has really stuck with me. The narrow walkable streets paved with big slabs of stone. The beautiful buildings. Etna puffing smoke rings. And the food. Oh, my. The food. This morning I spoke with a neighbour about their coming Europe trip which is going to include Sicily. I immediately went into "you should see..." mode. One of the things I thought should be on their to-do list was visiting a restaurant on Via Guiseppe Mario Puglia in Palermo.

I'd had one of the best meals of the trip there, sitting in the little square, surrounded by plants, strings of light, and magnificent music. I assumed it had always been like this - it was a tiny street in a city in Italy. Why wouldn't it have always been like this?

We've all (maybe) seen the walkable streets (I'll use walkable as a synonym for walkable/cyclable/good-space-to-be-in) posts about Amsterdam, where they show what it was like in the 70s compared to today, with the message that reclaiming space to make a great walkable city is possible, and that the Dutch didn't just magically have this walkable culture all along. Turns out that Italy didn't either.

I wanted to find this restaurant on a map to send to my neighbour, and got quite a surprise when I clicked the "See more dates" link and could choose street view from 2009, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2024. Turns out that the square on Via Guiseppe Mario Puglia wasn't always a gorgeous music filled space with a restaurant and bar. It took concerted effort. And what a result!

There's no reason why we can't muster this effort in our own home towns and tease out some really great spaces to be in.