Stone upon stone: an Italian sojourn: Strong sweet wine and wild uninhibited dancing

It was raining when we arrived in Marsala. So far we have missed much of it, though it has been all around us for many days, but today had we yet bought an umbrella we might even have found a time to use it.

We parked, thinking to walk through town to find a coffee. As we got out of the car a fellow with red tickets in his hand came up seeking parking money. Which is unusual, as so far in Sicily we have found machines when parking needs to be paid for. He looked tattered and scruffy and not like a city official so while Pete was reaching into his pocket for coins I asked for his credentials. He did not understand English and looked bemused, and a little wide-eyed and scared, and that started to alert Pete, who began to realise that this activity was suspicious. A second fellow was wandering loosely around a few cars away, similarly suspicious, peeking from behind parked cars.

Another car pulled up and that driver did not pay either of them, so I suggested to Pete that this would be a good time not to leave the car, and that we should drive on. As we hopped back into the car a third disreputable looking fellow, with some English, got out of a car --parked nose to nose with ours, as it turned out: we had had our backs to him talking to the first guy so did not notice him pull in-- came up to the driver's window and said that his friend only wanted €2 to 'watch our car' while we were exploring town.

Maybe.

We had heard of other tourists in Sicily similarly paying for parking security then returning to their cars and finding them completely fleeced. And these guys, if they were such a gang and they sure looked it, were well equipped with a get-away car, too, if that was their intent; so we smiled, nodded and said, 'Not today', and drove off.

So, we explored Marsala by car in the main: what there is left to explore after time deterioration and war damage have taken their toll, then pulled into a bar-tabac for coffee, where we came upon a vintage collection of some fine old Marsala wine bottles with the labels of 'Woodhouse' and 'Whitaker' lying dusty and forgotten on a side shelf there, and learned a little of the Marsala story.

It was a rainy day in 1773, too, when John Woodhouse, driven by a tempest, pulled into these docks for shelter, found a bar, and sat down for food and a drink. The local brew was so palatable to John that he quickly boxed up 5,000 imperial gallons of the strong cask-aged wine and shipped it home to England to see if they thought the same as he. They did. Another family, members of the wealthy Whitaker family already trading and living in Palermo, took over, built a warehouse compound on the docks here, a baglio, secure like a walled fortress, and moved into developing marsala wine for the export market.

Woodhouse and the Whitakers put Marsala on the map and for decades the town thrived as ships docked regularly here, picking up supplies: the town became rich and was humming.

Here, too, landed Giuseppe Gariblaldi in 1860: a general and a nationalist: with his thousand red-shirts loose on the city displacing the Bourbon rulers, quickly bringing Sicily into the fold of a unified Italy under the Sardinian leader Victor Emmanuel, who then became the first King of Italy in 1861.

Those were Marsala's glory days. Today it seems to be reverting back to being a sleepy dingy port city with lots of internal problems including frequent people trafficking reports from North Africa, and high unemployment. There is a huge immigrant population living close around the Kasbah in the centre of town and one of the schools in town, we read somewhere, is even being funded by the Tunisian government. Very unusual.

From there, we drove on to Mazara del Vello, an elegant waterfront town which has a lovely cathedral and very attractive piazza. We were here, mainly to visit the Dancing Satyr, now in a special museum that has been converted from an unused church in order to house it: so popular has it become.

This bronze statue has an amazing tale. Out on their usual fishing grounds just south and west of here, in 1997, the Capitan Ciccio fishing boat crew pulled up a bronze leg as part of their day's fishing catch from about a depth of 500 metres. The very next year, the same crew in the same boat, pulled up the torso and head: it rose up out of the sea head first, hair thrown back as if in a dance.

It was quickly called the Dancing Satyr.

In Greek mythology Satyrs are goat men: part goat, part man; but sometimes they are depicted with just pointed ears, as here. Like Pan, they, along with nymphs, were often portrayed cavorting in a near-orgiastic dance around the drunken god of wine, Dionysius.

The statue was sent off to Rome for research and identification. And many experts now believe it to be quite a faithful early copy of similar work done by the famous Greek sculptor, Praxiteles. So after touring many important galleries throughout Europe the Dancing Satyr came home to Mazara del Vello. And, for once, the siesta break did not close the museum, which is always a worry for us in Sicily as that time is often when we are in top tourist mode.

The Dancing Satyr is gorgeous. Its eyes, in particular, are unearthly, unworldly, quite irresistible: and still, over 2000 years old, near perfect. The uninhibited pose of the statue is similarly wonderful: so full of life and wild abandoned movement.

There were other interesting pieces of underwater archaeology that have been found close to the coast here, in the museum, including a collection of Punic and Roman amphorae: all so exquisitely shaped. So much more beautiful than our ugly plastic containers. Those really were the days.

Fine old Marsala wine bottles with the labels of 'Woodhouse' and 'Whitaker' lying dusty and forgotten on a side shelf

Mazara del Vello attractive piazza

Mazara del Vallo Cathedral del Santissimo Salvatore

Love the light

This ship is in honour of Holy San Vito, the town patron,
who escaped religious persecution after being reported for performing miracles by his father, a pagan. His nurse helped him escape on a ship