The Treasure Islands of Sicily
On the remote Aeolian Islands, writes Karen Sparnon, it is very easy to let the ordinary world slip away and to see everything through a layer of myth and legend.
“Auguri, signora, signore, auguri.”
At Reggio di Calabria an armless beggar got onto the train. His plaintive cry entered the carriage before he did. The two Sicilian women in our travelling compartment each made the sign of the cross and stuffed some money into his pockets. It didn’t matter that one was a lawyer and the other a biochemist. On Sicily and her islands we were to discover that religion, folklore and myth are all part of the landscape. It was an auspicious beginning as we were on a pilgrimage. We, too, were part of this other-worldliness. We were headed for the Aeolian archipelago, a small group of seven islands dotting the northern shores of Sicily. Our search centred on a tiny, stone house on Salina, known as the greenest island.
Reggio di Calabria is a working city, and from here the ferries to Sicily cross the narrow neck of the Straits of Messina at astonishingly regular intervals. Their destination is Messina, a beautiful, frantic city, perched on the narrow pinnacle where Sicily kisses the toe of Italy’s boot. At Reggio di Calabria the train was pulled apart and the individual carriages were shunted onto the ferry. The whole process took over an hour, most of which was spent in the dark. The sensation of leaving well-trodden ground intensified when we found ourselves sitting in a deconstructed carriage in the bottom of a ferry, listening to the swish and echo of the sea.
At Messina we didn’t wait for the train to be reassembled. We walked from the ferry terminus to the station entrance, which were in close proximity, wondering how to locate the car hire depot. As turned out to be the case in Sicily, the unexpected happened and the single employee of the depot, a dark-headed fidgeting Sicilian, was waiting for us at the station. We were swept into a car and tore at an impossible speed through the clogged streets of Messina. It was Friday and Messina was engaged in frenzied anticipation of the weekend. I kept my head down and noted that my partner had his hand firmly wedged against the dashboard. By the time we arrived at the depot the rain was pelting down, and our friend heaved our cases from car to car with little thought as to either cases or car. Papers to be signed flashed about and frequent phone calls bemoaning his belatedness were made to what turned out later to be a young woman. We were obviously in the middle of a hot date. This fully explained his extraordinarily prompt attention.
We had rented a villa in the seaside town of Gioiosa Marea, about half way along the north coast of Sicily. Milazzo, the port from which the traghetti – ferries – leave for the islands, is less than forty-five minutes drive. The agency had given us a map that read like a cryptic crossword clue and told us to turn left at the river. What river and how on earth do you get off the autostrade? We spent much of the hour-long trip on the mobile phone and it was midnight when our charming landlord, his wife and their huge dog rescued us from the main street of town.
A circuitous route which, incidentally, did not seem to contain any rivers, saw us in rural Sicily. The fire was alight, there was homemade wine and a bowl of olives on the table and, in the morning, the view from our window was superb. The villa nestled in a gully where goats grazed outside our door among the gnarled olive trees and, all around us, the steep sides of the mountains rolled down to the Sicilian shores. It was entrancing. Gioiosa Marea is no small town by Australian standards but it seems small. It is full of tiny shops and has its own miniature seaside esplanade. There was a shrine to Saint Francis guarding the rutted track to our villa, a church less than fifty metres away, and a little hunting through the dictionary informed us that Gioiosa Marea translates as Joyful Mary. Altogether, it was the perfect setting for any pilgrimage.
Travelling to the islands can be a hit and miss affair. The departure and return times of the hydrofoil vary considerably throughout the seasons, and it is wise to check in advance at one of the tiny offices scattered along Milazzo’s foreshore. On one of our island forays we encountered a considerable delay while, in true, gregarious Sicilian fashion, numerous divers inspected the nether parts of our ferry. Despite being interesting this did not engender confidence. However, eventually, all was to their satisfaction and on this particular day we slipped into the Tyrrhenian Sea in search of Salina. It is not possible to see all the islands in one day, despite their small size, as travelling between them takes considerable time.
On the remote Aeolian Islands it is very easy to let the ordinary world slip away and to see everything through a layer of myth and legend. Note that I say myth, not mist, for that is what happens when you step off Sicily – which is itself called Persephones’s Island, that lady having lived there before being spirited away to become mistress of the underworld – and head for the enchanted world of the Aeolian Islands. Everything seems to have its own story, most of which have roots far in the past.
The Aeolian Islands are named after Aeolus, the god of the winds, and their names read like a musical score: Vulcano, Lipari, Salina, Panarea, Stromboli, Filicudi and Alicudi.
Stromboli lies directly north of Milazzo with Salina to the northwest forming the apex of a triangle. In between Stromboli and Salina lies Panarea while, in a straight line from Milazzo to Salina, the traveller comes first to Vulcano and then to Lipari. Moving further westward are the islands of Filicudi and Alicudi which form a sort of tail off the coast of Salina.
The locals say that the islands are still evolving. They are fond of the story that, in I955, a small island emerged in the sea near volanic Stromboli and then promptly sank. To my mind this rather miraculous appearance and disappearance fits in rather well with the sense that somehow these islands are lost in time. They are an Italian Brigadoon and, like that mythical Irish town that slips in and out of the mists, they wield an uncanny power.
We stopped at Vulcano, once feared for its somewhat unpredictable rumblings, but now the destination of many European holiday seekers who come for the mud baths. Vulcano and Stromboli are the only active volcanoes in the archipelago. Vulcano was at one point owned by an Englishman who fled after an eruption in 1888 blew out a plug of fused magmatic material. For decades after island life revolved around farming and sheep rearing; black grapes, capers and fishing. In 1949, Dieterle made his film, Vulcano, with the actress Anna Magnani, and attention was again focussed on this wild island. Coincidentally, on the island of Stromboli, Rossellini began filming Stromboli, with Ingrid Bergman. It is said that competition between the Italian Magnani and the Nordic Bergman was somewhat intense!
The sheer cliff faces and the continuous smell of sulphur in the air, caused by the venting of steam, sulphur and carbon dioxide at high temperature, are all suggestive of a pent up energy. Vulcano was named after the Roman god of fire and is the legendary home of the forge of the gods. Its alum and sulphur have been extracted from time immemorial. Caves dug into the tuff are thought to be tombs built so that people could be buried near the god.
At Vulcano a man boarded with his accordion and serenaded us in true Italian style between Vulcano and the next island, Lipari. It didn’t matter that his playing jerked along with a syncopated rhythm and his singing was somewhat short of mediocre. In this ferry in the middle of the Tyrrhenian Sea Pavarotti himself could hardly have sounded better. He wore trousers made of some rough stuff, and the cuffs of his jumper had frayed. At the end of his set he held out his peaked cap for donations. He had the soulful, brown eyes of the southern Italian and was impossible to resist.
At Lipari parcels and boxes were heaved about and much discussion surrounded a particularly swish motorscooter. For the whole of our journey any slight movement of this bike would bring at least three locals rushing to its assistance. Lipari is the largest and most heavily populated of the islands. The ferries arrive at Marina Lunga, and above the town of Lipari are the imposing walls of the natural fortress of Castle rock, the ancient Greek acropolis. The Castle Rock area, continuously inhabited through six thousand years, combines elements from Neolithic times, Greek and Roman times through to Norman times, and numerous others in between. It is on Lipari that, in 1954, the Aeolian Archeological Museum was established and this continues to be their pride and glory. Lipari thrives because of its tourist trade, with pumice deposits coming a close second. The statue of San Bartolo, patron of Lipari, watches over all who enter island. Churches to visit include 16th century San Bartolomeo with its silver statue of the saint where, once inside, it is possible to visit the old cloister of the original Norman Abbey.
On these islands the layers of history are less sanitized than the well-known tourist sights. Standing in front of three or more distinct layers of untouched history is a traveller’s dream. The local people are often to be found visiting or tending these places and willingly direct and explain, dependant on the amount of shared language! That Lipari is becoming a tourist destination is evidenced by the plethora of packed little shops, and restaurants specializing in Aeolian cuisine.
Only four kilometres separates Lipari from Salina and it was just before lunch when we arrived at Santa Marina on Salina. At the turn of the century, over half the population of nine thousand people had emigrated from here to Australia, America, Argentina and Venezuela. This pattern had been repeated over all the islands in the Aeolian archipelago. One of the primary causes had been an outbreak of phyloxera amongst the vines, which had decimated the islands’ economy and scattered their people.
Salina is a living island with three main towns: Santa Marina, Malfa and Leni. The people still tend their vines and live in the old, stone houses dotting the hillsides. Our destination was Malfa and we boarded the blue bus, which careered along the hairpin bends that paralleled the jagged coastline. For such a small island the buses run frequently between the main towns and, for those who want to go off the beaten track, it is possible to hire what the locals call a scooter. Armed with an old photograph, and a guide recruited by our interested bus driver, we wandered Malfa in search of our house. Our guide was a local and found the approximate location easily enough but the perspective was wrong. We tried to explain but the notion of perspective was too abstract for our limited knowledge of the Italian language. We resigned ourselves to extravagant gesturing in appreciation of his efforts. Left alone we searched until we had, in front of us, an exact replica of our photograph. It was a timeless, white, stone house. Part of the roof had crumbled and washing was strung along the front porch. It was surrounded by vines and vegetables and it could have been either 1900, or the year 2000. We ate lunch in the shadow of my partner’s mother’s birthplace. She, too, had been part of the mass emigration of the early part of the century.
Malfa is tiny, only seven kilometres in diameter, and we located the church where a distant relative acts as housekeeper. In Italy any family connection evokes near hysteria and, language difficulties notwithstanding, we were bundled into a car and taken on a tour of the island. It was a maniacal ride, made more so by the cups of inky expresso downed just before leaving. Graziella maneuvered the bends at top speed, stopping every so often to tell us of some other wonder. We looked over Pollara where Massimo Troisi filmed Il Postino, and Graziella showed us the house inhabited by the poet Pablo Neruda in the film. It is a wild and glorious place; a town flanked by steep walls of fretted rock and peppered with wild broom and heather. It seemed fitting that the directors should have chosen this spot as the setting for their film. We admired the twin peaks of the two volcanoes, Monte Fossa delle Felci and Monte Rivi, in the centre of which lies the Valdichiesa – valley of the church – in which stands the beautiful sanctuary of the Madonna del Terzito. The views from the sanctuary over the great expanse of blue sea are magical and there is a peace seldom felt in any of the busier tourist destinations. The history of the sanctuary reaches back to the fifth century. The people of the islands so revere their Madonna that even today, in Australia, those whose roots hark back to these Islands celebrate her feast day in true Italian style.
From Salina it is possible to see the islands of Filicudi and Alicudi. Both these islands are off the shipping routes and only just beginning to attract tourists. With largely untouched prehistoric ruins, hillsides of white cubic houses, and unspoiled natural resources, they are a delight to visit. The locals say that some families can trace their ancestry back to the Roman Empire. Nearly all of these islands possess a valley with a church, and some ancient Greek or Roman ruins abandoned in remote and beautiful places. Standing in these places one is aware that these islands have a history that reaches back in a past where reality and myth eventually become indistinguishable. It is said locally that Atlantis disappeared into the sea following volcanic explosions in the Aeolian Islands. They say it lies in the triangle between Lipari, Salina and Panarea. Ulysses is said to have passed through these islands on his way to Ithaca, and Circe, the vestal virgin with her prophetic powers, is supposed to have resided at Filicudi.
On the return journey to Santa Marina, along the winding coastal road, our bus driver played classical music at full volume. Both Stromboli and Panarea could be seen in the distance. Stromboli is the most distant of the islands and the first impression is of craggy blackness against a blue sea. Stromboli is the legendary stopping-off place for sailors crossing the Tyrrhenian Sea. They are said to have assessed the direction and strength of the wind by the smoke from the volcano. There was no permanent settlement until the sixteenth century and, by 1800, the island had a fleet of over 65 sailing vessels. The advent of steam ships and railways in the nineteenth century reduced Stromboli’s maritime stronghold, and emigration saw the population plummet from five thousand to four hundred. Panarea is the smallest island and is said to be the floating island of the Odyssey. On the bus our only travelling companion was a retired schoolteacher with a little English. He told us that Panarea was like a “dream”, and pointed out the precise place where it was possible to see a smoking Mount Etna in Sicily, and a smoking Stromboli off the coast of Salina. He had a far away look in his eyes when he told us that this is paradise.
However, enchantment does not last forever and even pilgrimages come to an end. The sun was setting when we arrived at Santa Marina di Salina and watched the hydrofoil glide slowly into view. It was a perfect sunset, the kind that comes after a perfect day and anticipates a perfect tomorrow. We sat on the quay and in the distance saw Stromboli become shrouded in a soft purple haze which deepened, as we watched, into the insubstantiality of the winter’s evening mist. Or, would it be better if I said myth?