10. Sicily: From Montalbano to Marzamemi

Are you an Inspector Montalbano fan?

I am. I was hooked 20 years ago after seeing the first couple of episodes on TV and borrowed all of the books by Sicilian author Andrea Camilleri from the library. There have been 12 seasons of Commissario Montalbano, the first in 1999 and the twelfth, last year in 2018 but in total only 32 episodes have been made in that time.

I especially liked the episodes from around 2008 with Livia, Salvo's fly-in, fly-out girlfriend who lived in Genoa.  The show is still in production with two episodes being made each year.

We visited Punta Seca in 2017 and saw them filming - here's the link if you'd like to have a look at Montalbano's house.

This time we have revisited beautiful Baroque Scicli where the town hall is Montalbano's police headquarters.

Most of the buildings in the piazza have been used in the series for one purpose or another.

The building on the right with the green sign is Montalbano's pharmacy.  It is actually a pharmacy museum with all of the trappings of an olde worlde apothecary.

One of Salvo's cafes is at the end of the street.

And here is one of many fabulous Baroque palazzos featured in the series. The elaborately tiled and painted rooms in these magnificent buildings are so large they almost swallow up the furniture and indeed, the inhabitants too.  The elaborate wrought iron upper balconies on the Baroque buildings are generous and beautifully curved.

The television series has done much to raise the profile (and the economy) of this south-eastern area of Sicily. We keep tripping over all types of Montalbano focussed offerings for tourists,.  They range from the expected bus and bicycle tours of the filming locations to a newer idea that seems to be drawing a large following - the crime tour.
In Scicli, we came across a group of about 40+ people of all ages and probably nationalities, wearing black and yellow t-shirts branded 'Crime Game'. They were divided into teams and given clipboards of clues to follow to solve a 'whodunnit'. Some groups were on foot, others on bicycles. After several hours they re-assembled in the outdoor pizza restaurant in the upper piazza and each team added their information to a big crime scene board, just like the detectives do in the television shows.  One team wins but we weren't close enough to see just how that was determined, but all the punters seemed happy with the outcome.

From Scicli we move down to the coast to a lovely little B&B right on the water in Pozzallo.  We had hoped that it would be swimming weather - indeed, Paul has been swimming in April in previous years - but alas, not this year.

The wind was still blowing and the beach was deserted.

Pozzallo is the port for the Sicily- Malta ferries.  That is the port on the horizon with the cranes. The boats themselves are about the same size as the Queenscliff-Sorrento ferries and the 82 kilometre crossing takes around 90 minutes and traverses the very busy main shipping lines through the Mediterranean. By comparison the 10 km crossing of Port Phillip Bay takes 40 minutes.

Our current stop is just a few kilometres up the coast from Italy's southern-most point, the pretty seaside village of Marzamemi.

It was the Arabs of the 10th century who put Marzamemi on the map.

They not only gave the village its poetic name (something like Turtle Dove Bay) but also built the original tonnara (above) a tuna processing plant which was to become one of the most important on the island.

Although the tonnara (chimney and outbuildings above) is no longer operating, Marzamemi continues artisanal fishing and processing activities, producing delicacies including canned tuna, dried tuna roe (bottarga), smoked swordfish, marinated anchovies, seafood pasta condiments, tuna salamis and more.  We tasted these goodies in the old building whose roof appears above, but didn't buy - an acquired taste.

The old centre of the village, most of which dates back to the mid-18th century, is situated on a little promontory and organised around the extremely picturesque Piazza Regina Margherita (previous photos).

On the south side is the little fishing harbour with its bobbing fleet of colourful wooden boats.

The sun was wonderful once we found a spot out of the wind for coffee. The seating is hi-tech pallet design.

Checking out the lunch menu.

He can't resist the water - even for just a paddle.