There are those who recognise it among its markets, early in the morning, when the air is fresh and the scents are enhanced, or those who are convinced that they can perceive it in the dark, in the shaded courtyards of its buildings. Those who breathe it in the cobbled streets of the centre, immersed in the suffocating silence of midday, and those who feel they can touch it together with the marble friezes of its baroque churches. Someone looks for it from above, at sunset, walking among the roofs and domes. But the soul of Palermo remains everywhere and nowhere, like the essence of that Mediterranean which seems to find its adopted capital here: a city-laboratory of ideas and cultural thrusts where one arrives to intuit the future face of a truly multi-ethnic society. Always a mosaic of civilisations (Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Norman, Swabian and Spanish among many), today Palermo is not only past and tradition but also young and inclusive initiatives, enthusiasm, comparison and experimentation.