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Concetta Chillemi was chatting to friends outside her shop next to Palermo’s gallery for modern art housed in a sublime baroque church in the city’s historic centre. A few metres away, an Italian TV crew had its camera trained on the tiny square in front of the church where event staff in black T-shirts scurried around in the heat.
They were preparing for the arrival of the British singer Dua Lipa and the actor Callum Turner, who over the next two days are celebrating their wedding in the Sicilian capital after exchanging vows in London last weekend.
Dua Lipa is one of the world’s biggest pop stars, but Chillemi admits she didn’t know who she was until last summer, when the couple holidayed in Palermo soon after their engagement and shared photos on Instagram, including one taken during an aperitivo at a nearby bar.
Curious about all the fuss, Chillemi said she had familiarised herself with Dua Lipa’s music. “I got together with some of the other shop owners here and we listened to a few songs,” she said with a nonplussed shrug.
Late on Friday afternoon, the newlyweds are expected to be given a private tour of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Palermo, whose collection includes more than 200 19th- and 20th-century masterpieces, before joining their guests in the cordoned-off square. The details are closely guarded and everyone involved is tight-lipped owing to strict confidentiality agreements, but a council worker hinted that a sort-of “buffet” would be laid on – and perhaps Elton John will play the piano.
The couple arrived in Palermo by private jet on Thursday night. They are staying at Villa Igiea, a five-star art nouveau hotel where an entire floor of suites has been booked to host guests who, alongside Elton John, reportedly include Kylie Minogue, Donatella Versace, Harry Styles, Charli xcx – another British pop star who tied the knot in Sicily last September – and possibly Robbie Williams.
The Italian media has spent weeks building anticipation, hailing the celebrations as the wedding of the year.
The mood on the ground in Palermo, however, is somewhat ambivalent. While some residents are proud that Dua Lipa has chosen the city to mark her nuptials, others lament the road closures, security cordons and general disruption to daily life. Chillemi counts herself as among those viewing the excitement with a degree of scepticism.
“Sometimes it feels as though the city is becoming a theme park,” she said, echoing concerns about mass tourism and the high-profile occasions that intensify it.
Clarissa, who didn’t want to give her surname, works in a bar close to Chillemi’s shop. “I really like Dua Lipa’s music and admire her for all the activism she does,” she said. “But while it’s a pleasure to hold the celebrations in Palermo, it has brought a lot of problems – for example, for three days we’ve been forced to park miles away and walk to work. It’s not right to block the city – I could understand if it was for the pope, but not for a singer.”
Concetta Picciuca, a hotel worker and a Dua Lipa fan, didn’t mind at all. “I’m always listening to her music, it helps me to relax,” she said. “There are people who complain, but I think the event is a good thing because it’s good for the economy … Perhaps, like me, they should come to work by bike instead of by car.”
Picciuca used to live in Bagheria, a town close to central Palermo where the wedding celebrations will move to on Saturday. The evening venue is an 18th-century palace called Villa Valguarnera, which is owned by a descendant of Sicilian aristocracy and was one of the locations used in the Netflix miniseries, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), an adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1860s novel.
Bagheria was once a stronghold of Sicily’s mafia, the Cosa Nostra, but Picciuca said the main thing Dua Lipa will have to worry about these days is being doused with water. “People there have a habit of chucking dirty water over their balconies instead of down the sink … the amount of times I got soaked.”
The Guardian ventured to Bagheria to gauge sentiment about the celebrations. While Bagheria’s mayor, Filippo Tripoli, is pleased the town will get some global “visibility”, there are groans here too. Maria Aiello, who owns a clothes shop, said: “I like Dua Lipa but what will we get out of all this disruption? It’s not as if she’s going to come and buy anything from my shop.”
Francesco, who each evening congregates with his pensioner friends on a bench close to Villa Valguarnera, said he was excited about celebrities descending on Bagheria and even claimed to have insider knowledge about what they would be eating. “The menu will be completely Sicilian – arancini, pasta alla norma, cannoli, the works,” he said.
Dua Lipa’s connection with Palermo, a city that has undergone a radical transformation over the last decade or so, appears to have begun in 2023 when Foot Locker Europe released a series of images of her wearing the pink shirt of Palermo football club to promote the Puma Palermo trainers.
Palermo’s mayor, Roberto Lagalla, said that while he could empathise with residents’ complaints about the disruption, it was a “small sacrifice” to make. “It will achieve an important result in promoting visibility and, above all, boosting the often-suffering economy of a city which, thanks to tourism, is starting to breathe easier,” he said.
Lagalla, who hopes to meet the newlyweds, dismissed concerns about such events intensifying tourism and the associated problems. “We’re getting more culture tourism and higher-spending visitors,” he said. “This is important. Yes, Palermo is popular for weddings, whether among famous people or not, because it is a welcoming city.”
