Professor Domenico Spinelli, during the five academic years, from 1969 to 1974, in which he worked at the University of Palermo, succeeded in impacting Palermo’s organic chemistry so deeply, both scientifically and humanely, that even today, fifty years after his move to Bologna, his first- and second-generation students from Palermo still remember him fondly. The salient passages of the years he spent in Palermo are reported in this article, in the hope of being able to give an idea of one of the personalities who made a notable contribution to Italian chemistry in the second half of the 20th century.