On the other hand, the compact structure of Sicilian hill towns made a certain degree of intermingling among the classes unavoidable. Regional Sicilian writing of the period offers a varied tapestry of provincial town life in which vendors hawk their wares through narrow streets, women knit and gossip on their doorsteps, and the elite stroll daily along the main corso. The case basse or low, street-level houses of the poor appear scattered amid more modest two-story dwellings and the multiroom residences of the civili. With neighborhoods less rigorously demarcated than Sicilian society itself, distinctive landmarks provided shared communal space. In this respect, Mistretta was representative but also more aesthetically appealing, with its imposing Norman fortress (il Castello), graceful Pia Fountain, and public gardens of the Villa Châlet. By way of contrast, author Emanuele Navarro della Miraglia details the bleaker physical aspects of a prototypical Sicilian town in the opening paragraphs of his short story, “Paese” (The Village), written in 1885:

The town I would like to tell you about is one that you might find anywhere in Sicily, but that you would search for in vain on any map. It is called Gibelmoro…. It boasts two thousand residences and ten thousand inhabitants, nine tenths of which are peasants. There are very few well-to-do citizens and not many artisans. The town is spread out across the ridge of a mountain, encircled by fertilizer mounds and prickly pears that scent the surrounding air. It has twenty churches, more than fifty priests—five monasteries for men and three for women.

Theatres, hospitals, homes for the elderly? There are none…. Gibelmoro has a road that has been under construction for more than twenty years now, and that will probably not be completed before the new century. For the moment, the town is only accessible by horse, when the river torrents permit, and when the rains have not completely worn away the paths. The internal streets are steep, torturous and narrow, paved with rough white stones or not paved at all. (Navarro della Miraglia 1974, 71–76)