Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele in Palermo

You're standing on Piazza Verdi in Palermo, facing the Teatro Massimo. It's the biggest opera house in Italy, and when it opened, only the opera houses of Paris and Vienna were larger. Take a look at the front. With those columns and that stern triangular pediment, it could almost be a Greek temple. That's exactly the idea. Architect Giovan Battista Filippo Basile drew on the ancient temples of Selinunte and Agrigento, right here in Sicily.