Goodbye Sicily!

Start your day with a hearty breakfast and leave the city of Agrigento for the Tonnara di Scopello. I recommend, put your swimsuit in your bag: if the day is beautiful, you can have a wonderful swim in the blue and crystalline water of this magical and timeless place, set in a bay of incomparable beauty, protected by two medieval towers that watch over from above. The entire complex of the Tonnara faithfully represents the ancient history of the Sicilian sea and its traditions. Today it represents a natural museum overlooking the sea, as if to testify to the history of that economy which, for centuries, was the main source of subsistence of the local people: tuna fishing. Even today the equipment and tools used for tuna fishing are preserved intact. The ancient seaside village includes 14 residential units immersed in nature, distributed respecting their original history. Here you will spend a couple of hours, immersing yourself in an incredible atmosphere made of history and wonderful nature.

Once you have finished swimming and having filled your eyes with sun and blue sea, 20 minutes from the Tonnara di Scopello, you can reach the town of Castellammare del Golfo. Its geographical position wrote its history. The gulf of Castellammare is a real amphitheater overlooking the sea, partly delimited by Mount Ionico. It is among the most fascinating Sicilian tourist destinations for its beautiful naturalistic landscape and for its rich history. In fact it dates back to the arrival of the Arabs in the ancient city of Elima, the little harbor of the city of Segesta, to which they literally gave the name of "the stairs ”, perhaps due to the steps leading from the Bastion to the Port. It was during the Arab domination that the construction of the Castle began, completed by the Normans. Its name derives from Castrum ad mare de gulfo, given to it at the beginning of the year 1000 because it became a Norman and then Swabian fortification. With the victory of the Aragonese over the Angevins, the port of Castellammare del Golfo lost its meaning. With Sicilian Vespers (1282), under the guidance of Frederick of Antioch, the city flourished again becoming an important center for the grain trade. During the centuries the Castle was enlarged and around 1521 a first wall was also built, in 1587 a second one with three entrance doors. Between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the city began to expand along the coast from north to south, so much so that the country had to expand to accommodate the ever-growing population due to the immigrant flows of people who had moved here to work. As the whole Sicily, many dominations over the centuries have followed here in Castellamare del Golfo: from the Spanish to the Savoy, from the Austrians to the Bourbons but, in 1820, during the uprisings for independence, it was among the first cities to strongly support Garibaldi, until it became the splendid pearl of the land of Sicily.