The Phoenician Saline di Trapani e Paceco, Sicily

Trapani salt pans from the town of Erice (Èrici)

Sicily is one of these impossibly fascinating places to visit. The topography is dramatic, the people are friendly, the food is sublime, and the culture is an amazing interplay of Greek, Roman, Phoenician, Norman, Arab, and Italian influences. How could you not love an exploration of the culture and food? 

The Phoenecians settled in the coastal areas centuries before Roman domination. Among their developments are the famous and still-operating salt pans, the Saline di Trapani e Paceco, on the west coast of Sicily.

Kurlanski (2002) describes the salt pans:

South of Trapani along the coast, earthen dikes begin to appear and a few stone windmills. The dikes mark off ponds, some of which hold turquoise water, some pink. The stone towers of windmills stick out from these orderly pastel ponds. The saltworks are built out along the coast until towards the south, deep leafy green fields take over, which are the vineyards of Marsala wine. This is one of the oldest salt-making sites in the world - the one started by the Phoenicians to cure their tuna catch, and after the destruction of Carthage, continued by the Romans. When the Muslims were in Sicily from 800 to 1000, they wrote of the windmills of Trapani.

Early in the year (in winter), the workers open sluice gates to let sea water flood the shallow ponds. As the summer develops, the sun evaporates the water. Workers flush the brine into different ponds, allowing the brine to become successively more saline. 

By summer's end, the workers expose the salt that has precipitated to the bottom of the pans and then pile it in multi-ton piles, letting it continue to dry. The tan shapes are roof tiles erected to keep out rainwater. We bought a half kilo of the salt at the museum gift shop.

This is one of the old windmills. From Kurlanski (2002):

The current windmills are based on a Turkish model that was adopted by the Spanish, who brought their windmills to Sicily and later to Holland. About the year 1500, windmills were built here by a man named Grignani to move brine through the ponds. His son was named Ettore, which is the name of these saltworks facing the isle of Mozia. 

I love visiting places like this, where the ghosts of centuries - millennia - remind you that people have lived, worked, thrived, built, warred, and recovered on this land. It opens your eyes and soul. Do visit Sicily, definitely. Spend weeks - months - there.

These are digital images from a Panasonic G1 µ4/3 camera with various lenses. I processed the Raw files with PhotoNinja software.

References

Duncan, P. 1994. Sicily: A Traveler's Guide. John Murray, 244 p.

Kurlansky, M., 2002. Salt, A World History. Penguin Books, 484 p. 

Monreale - Monumental Norman Cathedral, Sicily

Monreale, a town 15 km south of Palermo, is the site of a great Norman Cathedral. It is endowed with rich ornamentation and six acres of amazing 12th century mosaics. You wonder what wealth the Norman kings were able to accumulate to undertake construction of such an ambitious project? We could barely undertake a project like this today.

The view north towards Palermo covers a sweep of bay, sky, and medieval rooftops.

To reach the upper levels of the towers, you get to ascend some tiny stairways with a serious dropoff to one side. In the United States, we would never let tourists have fun like this (and many Americans would be too fat to fit).

According to Wikipedia,

The Cathedral of Monreale is one of the greatest extant examples of Norman architecture in the world. It was begun in 1174 by William II, and in 1182 the church, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, was, by a bull of Pope Lucius III, elevated to the rank of a metropolitan cathedral. 

The church is a national monument of Italy and one of the most important attractions of Sicily.

As in most (all?) churches in Palermo, the stonework and mosaics are exquisite. The Moorish stone masons were absolute masters of their trade. The elegant cloister (in the two photographs above) were completed about 1200. They are well-preserved and one of the finest examples in Italy both in size and beauty of detail.

These are digital images from a Panasonic G1 camera, with RAW files converted to black and white with PhotoNinja software.

Gorgeous View, Haphazard Town: Porto Empedocle, Sicily

Porto Empedocle is a seaport in southern Sicily. Most tourists in the area do not bother with the Port because their destination is the famous Valle dei Templi (Valley of the Temples or in Sicilian: Vaddi di li Tempri), an astonishing ancient Greek archaeological site in nearby Agrigento. On a recent road trip around Sicily, the coast highway E931 took me right through Porto Empedocle, and it looked too interesting to not stop.

The town is the terminus for ferry boats that go to the islands of Linosa and Lampedusa. Lampedusa, only 110 km from the coast of Tunisia, was in the news in 2011 because thousands of escapees from Libya and Tunisia were quarantined there in refugee camps. Remote Linosa was once a penal colony for Mafia chieftains and thugs. In the 1930s, dictator Benito Mussolini almost succeeded in eradicating the Mafia by executing hundreds (thousands) and banishing hundreds to prison camps on Linosa. But the American forces in 1943 enlisted the Mafia to help overthrow the Germans, put the Mafia back in power in rural towns all over Sicily, and the rest is history (Duncan, P. 1994. Sicily: A Traveller's Guide, John Murray Publishers Ltd.).

The town is built on two levels. The port and lower town are on the coastal plain, while the upper town is about 100 m higher on a limestone ridge. The lower town is a warren of twisty lanes with haphazard multi-floor apartments. Some may be late 1800s-vintage, but most look like dumpy post-World War II units, with an occasional modern monstrosity. The photographs above were taken from the Via Mare road that runs along the ridge.

Up on the ridge, all of the apartment blocks look to be post-1960s. The town has been known for its sulfur mines since antiquity. Do all these people work at the sulfur factory?

We saw some children playing, but the streets were pretty quiet mid-day on a Saturday. A supermarket tucked into the basement of one of these apartments was busy.

The streets reminded me of people's housing blocks I saw in the old Soviet Union, except here there were more private cars and the general maintenance condition was better.

Do not let me discourage you: Sicily is a spectacular tourist destination, and the people are very friendly.  The history spans the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Normans.

Photographs taken with a Panasonic G1 digital camera. These look different then my previous Panasonic images because I processed the raw files with Photo Ninja. This is an amazing software that extracts subtle details from the files - highly recommended!