Sciacca

Looking out over the marina from the old city walls   

Having spent the night at anchor to the east of the harbour walls, in the middle of the morning on Tuesday 30 May we made our way into Sciacca harbour and moored up at the Lega Navale pontoon. The very helpful lady in the office [Ed: working in best international sign-language – our Italian is poor, her English not much better] showed us all around the facilities, which include a washing machine, issued us with a security card to get in and out (no deposit!) and said we should pay ‘later’. Our explore around town was delayed by washday.

Sciacca has a long history, dating back to the 7^th century BC. The ancient Greeks had cities nearby at Selinunte and Agrigento and discovered thermal springs at Sciacca resulting in the foundation of the new town. Even now the spa draws in tourists and locals alike though we did not visit.

The town has passed through many hands (Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arabic and Spanish) but the Norman period has left the greatest mark, in the form of many, many churches and the city walls. And, of course, Sciacca would not be a Sicilian town if there were not a tale of a blood feud between 2 rival families, this time a story dating to 1400-1529, and pitting the Sicilian Perollo family against the Spanish Luna family.

But, despite all this history, our over-riding impression of Sciacca was of a scruffy fishing port of, primarily, best Sicilian brutalist concrete architecture. Looking hard, we managed to find a few old, elegant buildings but modern Italian style clearly does not extend to their built environment.

But Sciacca also has a history of ceramic making and this was certainly evidenced to us in the numerous ceramics shops around the town. The main town is up a steep hill from the (very scruffy) fishing port, where signs warn that one shouldn’t swim in the harbour because of pollution. The many sets of steps that lead up to the main town from the narrow streets around the port are faced with bright tiles on their risers, which makes the climb up that much more interesting.

The serious business of bowls

For once we managed to time our arrival in the town just as the siesta period was ending. We took in the views across the harbour from the main piazza and wandered some of the smaller streets before stumbling upon the men’s evening bowls competition. It seemed to be being taken nearly as seriously as petanque or boules in France. We also found an excellent gelateria (with Wi-Fi) but no fish shops!

However, the lady in the tourist information office directed us to the commercial port where she said that some of the catch was sold on the dock. This proved to be an excellent pointer and we bought half a kilo of squid for €5 [Ed: with some difficulty in the pricing because the Sicilians seem not to understand my self-taught Italian – I can’t imagine why!] We also wanted some prawns but when we tried to buy some from a chap loading a small lorry with large trays of the things, he gave us 2 or 3 great handfuls, which turned out to be over 1kg, and refused to take any payment! We had a lovely dinner of fried calamari and garlic prawns and Chinese-style prawns and we still had more than enough prawns left over for dinner the next evening.

So, with the washing complete and food essentials (and some Sicilian wine) purchased, we needed to continue our journey west. Next stop – Marsala?

Sciacca, Sicily, Italy