Country: Italy
Region: Sicily
Time of visit: June 2021
Duration of visit: half a day
My rating: 7/10
For our visit to the south-western part of Sicily we have chosen Mazara del Vallo (a small and relatively unknown fishing village in the far south west of Sicily) as a base; changing apartments every night, as we did more frequently during our stay in the south east, is stressful and time consuming; Mazara del Vallo is at a reasonable distance from all the places we wanted to visit in the southwestern part of Sicily, and so we chose Mazara as a fixed base for our excursions. Furthermore, I had read tempting tales of a cosmopolitan Mazara, characterized by a fascinating Arab quarter, almost a souk on Italian soil, which led me to dedicate a day's travel to visiting the seaside town.
Rather randomly, our choice fell on a B&B, the Volturno3, which turned out to be a very lucky choice and an enchanting place. The photos you can see on their site are fully representative of the reality you will find; the place is recently renovated, very welcoming, full of every comfort and the owners are great guests.
Mazara had been at the origin of the choice to make a trip to southern Sicily; one evening while we were at dinner talking about this and that, the idea of taking a trip in June had begun to take shape and since both me, my children and my partner are passionate about good food, we all immediately thought to Sicily; the association of ideas was immediate: granite and cannoli; but immediately after, the thought went to the red prawns of Mazara del Vallo, a very common (and pricey!) delicacy in Italy, almost always present in raw fish trays. So Mazara was immediately a must: we were on a mission for raw shrimps!
Our first day in Mazara, therefore, as soon as we woke up, mindful of the experience at the Catania fish market, which expresses its maximum vitality in the early hours of the morning, we immediately headed towards what Google Maps indicated as the position of the fish market. We arrived on the fishing boat dock around 10 in the morning, but ... nothing ... not only was there not a person, there was nothing at all, just a simple fish shop with two stalls and a few boxes on display...
Needless to say, we were very disappointed; Mazara del Vallo is essentially a fishing village; indeed Mazara is THE fishermen's village; south of Mazara there is just open sea for hundreds of kilometers and then Africa; from the fish market in Mazara we were expecting another expression of local folklore, of the relationship between man and the sea, of the perpetuation of traditions ... nothing ... to make the scenery more deserted, only a few rolling bushes were missing. However, among the few crates present on the stalls of the fish market there was a box of the famous red prawns that had taken us by the stomach and led us to Sicily, so my partner, who is also introverted, but not as much as me, decided to buy them and started chatting with the fishmonger. I, like a good introvert, stood on the sidelines looking around and to pass the time I began to take some pictures.
A customer looked at me and, instead of wondering why I photographed the fish, approached me and said "since you like to take pictures, come back today at 2 PM; the fishing boats return at that time and the auction is held; it's a good show; there are negotiations in Sicilian dialect; people discuss; it's interesting, trust me". My partner and I looked at each other ... maybe we just got the time wrong. So we decided to visit Mazara and return at 2 to watch the return of the fishing boats and the fish auction.
The Mazara village itself did not live up to expectations; I had read a lot about the charm of a real North African souk on Italian soil, but wandering through the alleys of the historic center I didn't see any of this. It is true that one can perceive in a tangible way the rooted presence of an Arab enclave and the perfect integration of the two peoples; in some areas of the center, while walking, you meet exclusively Arab families and, with a little imagination, you can think that by walking absent-mindedly you have ended up in Morocco without realizing it; but the buildings, the streets, lack personality; there are some monuments, some historic buildings, but nothing that in my view justifies a trip to visit Mazara; some enlightened administrators have revitalized otherwise anonymous alleys by decorating them with majolica, which in effect gives vitality and color to an otherwise somewhat gray urban outfit.
What is absolutely worth a visit, and was among the objectives of my Sicilian trip, is the bronze statue of the dancing satyr. It is a bronze statue found in the sea by a fishing boat off Mazara del Vallo at the end of the 90s. As was the case with the most famous Riace Bronzes, also found at sea, in Calabria, in the mid-70s, the finding of the Satyr caused great uproar in the national press and animated debates for years on the quality of the work, on the attribution. on conservation and restoration. Personally I am a great admirer of Hellenistic sculpture; I think it is one of the highest peaks reached by art in the course of all human history, both in terms of technical skills and expressiveness. The Satyr of Mazara is a marvel from a technical point of view: the quality of the bronze casting and the ability to create a work of such spatial dynamism are extraordinary, as is the vitality of the statue, animated in a frenzied dance, extending the limbs in every direction, with the head turned backwards and the gaze turned to the sky, as if prey to intoxication; as only the greatest works of Mannerist statuary were able to do later, the statue can be admired from every angle, taking on different shapes and meanings; from some perspectives the composition appears more static and the finesse of the anatomical details stand out, while from other perspectives the movement acquires greater vitality and more than the plasticity of the musculature, the spatiality stands out; to this we must add the charm of a work that has "slept" in the depths of the sea for millennia, only to be resurrected and brought back before our eyes; the small museum that houses the Satyr, rightly focuses on the fact that the sea is a keeper of treasures and who knows what surprises it will still hold for us in the future.
A work of such importance is rightly well preserved: if I am not mistaken it seemed to me to have 9 employees, for a museum that, in a single room, houses a statue and some minor finds; a first attendant, at the entrance, was dedicated to interpreting the comedy of the Qr Code which we had already witnessed when visiting the amphitheater of Catania (I found this interpreter superior for pathos and expressive subtlety compared to his Catania counterpart); a second employee worked on the computer to issue the tickets; a third stood behind the second instructing him on the functionality of the operating system; two people rightly watched over the works exhibited in the room; when the team seemed complete to me, my youngest son, bored by staying in the museum too long for him, and unable to stay too long without messing around, opened a door to discover, it seemed to me, other four people who, intent on doing I don't know what in an adjacent room, reacted with surprise to my son's intrusion, quickly closing the door.
At the British Museum in London there is a marble bas-relief representing a Dionysian dance; it is a work from the Villa Quintiliana on the Appian Way in Rome that the curators of the British Museum report to be a Roman original inspired by earlier Greek works. Who knows, maybe the Roman author of the London panel had seen the dancing satyr with his own eyes before it was swallowed by the abyss.
After a day of walking, we were all reasonably hungry and after some research our choice fell on the Trattoria La Kasbah (Via Itria 10; my rating 8/10) where we pleasantly lingered in the shade of an alley, enjoying the delicacies of Sicilian cuisine; here in particular, as is a must in Mazara, the dishes are mainly based on fish; the Arab influence is evident in a local specialty: fish couscous with paprika, delicious!
Between the magnificent Dancing Satyr and a tasty exotic lunch, the visit to Mazara was starting to make sense, but what completes each traveler's experience was still missing: a dip in the local culture. It was almost 2 PM and we left rather hastily the Trattoria la Kasbah, where lunch had been so pleasant that I regretted leaving so quickly without stopping to taste some liquor; but we didn't want to miss the event that had tickled our curiosity as lovers of the sea and good fish.
In fact we had taken the time indication too literally (a mistake that should never be made in Sicily) and we had to wait a good half hour before the first fishing boat appeared at the end of the canal.
From that moment, however, we were captured for almost two hours by the staging of a ceremony, which I presume is repeated every day unchanged for decades, which fascinated us and captured us, despite the modesty of the scenography and the small number of performers.
Just as we were told, with consummate theatricality the fishermen gave life to their interpretation, praising the qualities of their goods, contesting their value, discussing prices, declaiming public offers; from time to time, from the bellies of the boats that moored from time to time at the quay, crates full of all the qualities of fish came out; the richness and abundance of seafood arranged on the market stalls recalled the still lifes of Flemish art or or the richness of the works of Giuseppe Arcimboldo;
do not think that language is a barrier that will prevent you from fully appreciating the show; the narrow Sicilian dialect spoken by fishermen, with its particularly exotic tones, is almost incomprehensible even to the ears of an Italian, but the facial expressions and gestures are sufficiently eloquent to overcome any linguistic barrier.
After more than half an hour of staging, when I was already sufficiently gratified by the spectacle of the haggling of the fishermen and the flow of goods that flowed under my eyes, the protagonist made his entrance on the scene; a man of mature age, with his face evidently hollowed out for many years in the sea, the good-natured expression of his eyes hiding an ill-concealed flicker of malice, with the evident satisfaction of exposing himself once again to his audience, took up a position in the center of a group of people gesturing in front of a stall and assumed the role of auctioneer.
The half hour that followed was the masterful performance of a consummate actor who performed for the sole pleasure of doing so, honoring his audience with his performance; alternating mellifluous tones with peremptory gestures, accommodating glances and lightning-fast changes of expression, jokes and lashing responses, the auctioneer distributed the seafood one by one until the few remaining products were returned to their respective fishermen who distributed themselves to the margins of the market to complete the disposal of unsold items.
In my introduction to the trip to Sicily, I mentioned Pietro Germi among my favorite authors who represented Sicily in a more effective way, fueling my passion for this land; in Divorce Italian Style there is a scene that I particularly love: the rhetorical plea that a lawyer holds before a jury to support the accused's innocence while the audience stands with bated breath and a carabiniere watches, ecstatic almost to tears.
A few years later Fabrizio De André in Bocca di Rosa returned to the topic of the emotionality of the carabinieri, but this scene is a masterful synthesis of the passion and theatricality of the Sicilians. Attending the Mazara del Vallo fish auction, the performances of the interpreters and the reactions of the spectators was like experiencing one of the great Italian comedy films in person.
Mazara del Vallo had finished giving us what it could offer us and it was time to start exploring western Sicily.
(Brief sad ending: during the fish auction my partner got duped and persuaded to buy a 5 kg box of squid; for days on we kept on eating squid even for breakfast, my children no longer want to hear the word).
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