There is a thread that links two cities facing the same Strait of Sicily, united by centuries of history and a visceral relationship with the sea. In Mazara del Vallo everything begins at dawn, when the canal port comes alive with the return of the fishing boats — Italy’s most important fleet — from where one day in March 1998 even a bronze Dancing Satyr resurfaced, trapped in the nets after two thousand years of silence on the seabed.
It is there, in the Kasbah with its narrow alleys and coloured majolica, that the daily ritual of the red prawn takes place: raw, barely dressed with a drizzle of oil, or in the fish couscous that tells of an unbroken meeting of cultures between the two shores of the Mediterranean. Travelling south along the coast, the landscape changes but the story continues: Marsala welcomes the traveller with its Fish Market Square, and a little further on the Stagnone lagoon opens onto sparkling salt pans and the Phoenician island of Mozia.
Two ports, a single sea culture that has become cuisine, art and landscape. Following this itinerary means letting yourself be guided by the slow rhythm of the coast: stopping where the smell of grilled fish invites you to sit down, where an alley tells a story with its painted tiles.
