![\"Under](\"http:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2019\/01\/Sicily-300x192.jpeg\")
An interview with Bar Vitelli\u2019s owner at the Sicilian setting in The Godfather. Photo by Julian Motfolea<\/p><\/div>\n
Corleone, in the film, asks Apollonia\u2019s father, on the patio, for his permission to formally court her. A traditional Italian Sunday family dinner, and the eventual outdoor wedding reception, during which the newlyweds are seen dancing, was also staged on that veranda in front of Bar Vitelli and in the tiny piazza.<\/p>\n
Nearly a half-century after The Godfather\u2019s premier, visitors to Bar Vitelli and its patio find it exactly as Corleone did in the movie \u2013 complete with the beads hanging from the door and the \u201cItala Pilsen\u201d metal sign on the building\u2019s flagstone facing. They\u2019ll also hear gentle Italian mandolin music playing, including unmistakable melodies from\u00a0The Godfather\u2019s soundtrack. From that veranda visitors can also see a silhouetted monument to Coppola. Production photos snapped during the filming and newspaper clippings adorn the walls of a small interior room. Tasteful, unique Godfather souvenirs are sold alongside a counter offering espresso, brioche, granite di limoni (Coppola\u2019s favorite), Sicilian wines, and other tasty tipples.<\/p>\n
I made my way up a winding mountain road to Bar Vitelli on a quiet\u00a0Saturday Morning.\u00a0ICBellagio.com<\/a>, a celebrated tour company which creates authentic, insider Italian travel experiences such as access to the Vatican, Venice and elsewhere, had actually arranged for me to have a conversation with the current proprietor Lorenzo Motta. Motta, who also gave me a personal tour, is the nephew of Maria D\u2019Arrigo who owned Bar Vitelli during filming of\u00a0The Godfather\u00a0– and production of its two sequels, which were filmed in nearby Forza D\u2019Agro. I purposely, to play the role to its fullest, dressed in the same clothing (a flat cap, dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and vest) Corelone wore in the film. Borrowing a line from the movie, I insisted to the white-haired Motta, \u201cI am an American hiding in Sicily and there are people who would pay a lot of money for that information.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n He laughed and insisted he \u201cknew nothing\u201d before I continued to tease him by again invoking the Corleone character: \u201cDo you have a daughter?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe Godfather, for me, is a parody of life,\u201d Motta answered. \u201cIt is the power, the face of crime, politics and finance.\u201d<\/p>\n Tourists to the region, including, historically, the Hollywood crowd, typically stay at hotels such as the luxurious Belmond Grand Timeo in nearby, glamorous, Taormina which was, ironically, where James Gandolfini, who played a mob boss in the television series \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d was headed when he died of a heart attack in Rome. But pilgrimages to Bar Vitelli are so popular that Motta and his wife Nuccia will, for the first time, open 10 guest rooms, an event terrace, and subterranean wine tasting room in March.<\/p>\n \u201cSavoca is a magical, simple place with a beautiful panorama of the sea below, the mountains, and the Mt. Etna volcano,\u201d said Motta.<\/p>\n The 13th<\/sup>\u00a0century Church of San Nicolo (now known as Santa Lucia), from which Corleone and Apollonia are seen processing following their wedding is perched upon the dramatic mountainside. Visitors can retrace the ill-fated couple\u2019s steps. What moviegoers don\u2019t see in the film – but tourists will view upon visiting – is the jaw-dropping, sweeping view of the sea and mainland Italy far below seen from both Bar Vitelli and the church. Coppola, in directing\u00a0The Godfather, hid those views in the scenes since Savoca was meant to portray the town of Corleone, which in reality is hours away in the Sicilian countryside and unremarkable visually.<\/p>\n Delta Airlines flies, via Rome, to Catania Airport just over an hour from the Taormina\/Savoca\/Forza D\u2019Agro \u201cGodfather\u201d region.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Contact<\/em>\u00a0Travel Writer Michael Patrick Shiels at\u00a0MShiels@aol.com<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0His radio program may be heard weekdays at\u00a0MiBigShow.com<\/a>\u00a0or in Lansing on WJIM am 1240\u00a0from 9-noon. His latest book is \u201cI Call Him Mr. President \u2013 Stories of Fishing, Golf and Life with my Friend George H.W. Bush\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rookie mobster Michael Corleone, in Mario Puzo\u2019s book \u201cThe Godfather,\u201d is sent in exile from New York to hide out in Sicily. In the resulting Academy Award-winning movie, director Francis Ford Coppola chose the tiny village of Savoca \u2013 population 89 – as the location shoot for those old world scenes starring Al Pacino. Many of them were filmed over a six-week period on the patio of Bar Vitelli, Savocaa\u2019s small, cliff-side caf\u00e9 near the location of the church in which Corleone marries Apollonia Vitelli \u2013 the daughter, in the story, of the caf\u00e9s owner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":2331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[1023618,4071,1023620],"class_list":["post-2328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-travel","tag-godfather","tag-sicily","tag-corleone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2019\/01\/Sicily.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2328"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2348,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions\/2348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/traveltattler\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}