Mazara del Vallo

Until recently, few travelers visited Mazara, but in the late 1990s local fishermen caught in their nets an extraordinary ancient Greek bronze of a dancing satyr. Larger than life and attributed to Praxiteles, the most famous Greek sculptor, it is now displayed in a beautifully converted former church. This discovery has made Mazara an irresistible stop for travelers visiting the nearby temples of Selinunte and Segesta.

If you're here, it would be a shame to visit without seeing more of the town's historic center. Of all the towns in Sicily, it is in Mazara del Vallo that the island’s ancient Islamic heritage remains most tangible. Several Sicilian towns might retain an old Arabic quarter of labyrinthine streets and dead-end courtyards, but only in Mazara do you find the so-called Kasbah, a thriving North African neighborhood. Mazara’s present-day Islamic community has its origins in the 1960s, when the town’s fishing fleet was the biggest in Italy, but short on labor. A call was put out to North Africa, and sailors, fishermen, and eventually their families began to move back into the largely abandoned Kasbah. However, the town’s links with North Africa are far more ancient, perhaps inevitably so given that it is the closest point on mainland Sicily to the coast of Africa. Under the ancient Greeks of Selinunte, it became a thriving trade center, and in the 9th century AD, it was here that an Islamic army of over 10,000 landed and began the conquest of Sicily. You can still see remnants of those roots throughout the neighborhood, with Arabic tiles, Islamic art, and texts. Even a closed business door can be a work of art with historic passages painted on its covers.