2 Best Sights in Sicily, Italy

The twisted maze of narrow streets and tiny courtyards at the core of Mazara’s historical center is most interesting if you visit with a local guide. There is no danger, but as the distinction between what is a private courtyard and a public thoroughfare is blurred, it is far more comfortable, as a stranger, to be accompanied by a local (in addition, you will probably get to meet a few of the 4,000-strong Tunisian community who live here). Throughout the Kasbah (and indeed scattered all over the historic center) are a series of ceramic statues, some commissioned from local artists, others by schoolchildren, as an appealing initiative by the local administration. On Via Porta Palermo, students from the local art school were given free rein to decorate the metal doors of abandoned lock-ups. Tours are at their most evocative just before sunset, when men gather after a day’s work in little social clubs, children play in the street or go to the community play center, and the sound of a recorded muezzin calls the faithful to prayer.

In 2005, after four years of painstaking restoration in Rome (and several attempts to keep it there in the capital), the Dancing Satyr, the ancient Greek statue found by fishermen off the town's coast, found its permanent home here in the deconsecrated church of Sant’Egidio. Exquisitely lit and larger than life, it is a truly extraordinary work (despite missing both arms and a leg) caught mid-air, mid-dance in the throes of ecstasy, with the musculature and grace of movement associated nowadays with contemporary ballet. Scholars think it probably formed part of a group with other dancing Maenads, lost when the ship carrying them capsized in the Sicilian Channel. Ancient Greek bronze statues are extremely rare—only five have survived—as bronze was precious, and most were melted down. The satyr was created using the lost wax process, a technology designed to use as little bronze as possible: a clay model of the statue was made and fired, and when it cooled, it was covered with a layer of wax, followed by another layer of clay, this time with several holes. Then liquid bronze (heated to something like 1800°F) was poured through the holes. The melted wax then ran out, and the clay core turned to sand, leaving a bronze shell that would then have been polished. Other finds from under the sea are displayed in the museum, the most intriguing of which is the bronze foot of an elephant.