Moro's heads are perhaps among the best-known symbols of Sicily.
They represent the head of a man and a woman, generally hollow so that they can be used as saucers. Yet, not everyone knows the history of this particular ornament and why the two heads should always be in pairs.
There are two versions of the legend of the Moro's Heads. If you have patience, we will tell you both.
In a distant time, when Sicily was a swarming of ethnicities and peoples, a Moro (a Berber) passing through the streets of the Arab quarter Kalsa, in the heart of Palermo, fell in love with a young and beautiful maiden, fair-skinned and blue-eyed, whom he often saw looking out from his balcony.
Days passed and, between fleeting glances and smiles stolen from behind the curtains, the young woman ended up falling in love with the Moro. Their love was consummated in secret, escaping prying eyes and hiding in the dark alleys of Palermo. Unfortunately, however, the girl did not know that she had been deceived, and when she found out that her Moro would soon have to leave for the East where his wife and children were waiting for him, she was consumed with rage and jealousy. So she lured the man to her house to watch the moon together one last time, from that very balcony that had brought them together, and waited patiently for the man to fall asleep. When she saw him lying on the bed, feeling humiliated and betrayed, she cut off his head.
The next day, after emptying the skull, she planted basil inside it, which had always been considered a sacred plant, and began to cultivate it day by day as if that plant represented their love. Watered by the young woman's tears, the basil became lush to such an extent that it was envied by the neighbors, who soon began to display pots in the shape of the Moro's head on their balconies.
The second version of the legend tells, however, that in the same historical period as the first, around the year 1000, a young Moro soldier and a young Palermitan maiden fell madly in love. However, the girl's father, a Sicilian nobleman, detested the idea that his daughter, so pure and candid, with skin the color of stars and eyes as blue as the Palermo sea, could be given in marriage to a Moro, a simple soldier to boot.
Her father's threats were of no use; the young woman was willing to do anything to be with her beloved forever. Meanwhile, rumors began to circulate in the town about the young woman, and, as always in these stories, it is the woman who pays the greatest price. The father, feeling humiliated by what he heard about his daughter and seized with anger at her disobeying orders, decided to remedy the situation.
One night of heavy rain, knowing where the two lovers used to meet, he waited until they had fallen asleep and entered the room. No remorse, no hesitation, he approached the bed and killed the two unsuspecting young men, cutting off their heads.
The next morning, Palermo awoke to the cries of horror from the women of the neighboring houses who wept and cursed the maiden's father for the dastardly deed and for having had the audacity to display the heads of the two young lovers on the balcony so that they would serve as a warning to other young girls not to disobey their father.
The rain of the night had made flowers bloom from those heads. The women of Palermo rebelled against the act of the girl's father and, in solidarity with that broken love, began to have vases made in the shape of heads where they could display their flowers, because it is from love and only from love that anything can be born, even and in spite of pain.
That is why the man's head is always that of a Moro unlike the woman's, traditionally depicted as white, and for these stories of broken love, destroyed by humiliation, anger and jealousy, the two heads must always be together.
