There is not a Palermitan who does not know the Via Divisi, stuck at the beginning of Via Roma: the country of toys for the children of the city who remember their first bicycle.
Memories with a sweetish taste cross the mind of any Palermo when he hears Via Divisi named: a narrow alley near the central station of Palermo and made even narrower by the hundreds of bicycles that hang, colorful and shiny, from the walls of the buildings.
In fact, the small street, which dates back to the old medieval urban "plan", is also known as the "bicycle route" because of the almost exclusive predominance of these shops.
Alive with the smell of rubber and paint, this street in Rome already in the fifties was considered the country of toys and wonders for all those children who were brought here by mom and dad to choose together which of those would have been the first bicycle of the their life.
And then there were the recurrences: still today many people tie the walk in via Divisi to the autumn celebrations "of the dead", when they managed to convince the grandfather on duty to make this very important purchase, a gift that meant growth.
But we also went there just to look, to daydream about the latest brand new bicycle seen only in magazines arriving from overseas or also, as many remember, to chat with the master bicycle makers who made history.
All around there was the magic of the two wheels: the intense smell of oil and the music of the bells that were tried, A show that filled the eyes and hearts referring to the myths of Coppi and Bartali and the sound of the spoked rims that popped on the balate of the old town.
For the picture we thank the facebook group "Palermo of the past".
