Trapani

Western Sicily gets fewer people than the east, which is either its main recommendation or its main problem depending on what you’re looking for. Trapani sits at the very tip of the island, pointing toward Tunisia like an afterthought or an intention — it’s 150 kilometers from Africa here, and you can feel that in the food, the light, and the flatness of the landscape compared to the rest of the island.

The Salt Flats

The Saline di Trapani, the salt flats south of the city toward Marsala, are the first thing. They’re a working landscape — salt has been harvested here since the Phoenicians — but they’ve become a natural spectacle in the process. The shallow water in the pans changes color through the day, from silver-grey in the morning to a saturated pink at sunset when the algae that live in hypersaline water color the light. Old stone windmills stand between the pans, some restored, some not, all photogenic in the way that you feel slightly embarrassed about noticing.

I went in late afternoon and stayed until after the sun dropped. There were a few other people. After the sun went down and the sky went dark blue-grey, the pink held in the water longer than seemed physically possible.

The Old City

Trapani’s old city occupies the thin spit of land that juts into the sea. The main street, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, ends at the Torre di Ligny, an Aragonese watchtower at the tip of the peninsula. The street has the standard Sunday-evening passeggiata quality of a Sicilian town — everybody out, no particular destination, the ritual of being seen in your neighborhood.

The fish market behind the port in the morning is working fish market rather than a tourist display: swordfish, red mullet, dentice, the violet-pink blush of fresh gamberi. I bought something I couldn’t identify and asked the vendor to explain it. He did, in Sicilian dialect, and I understood about a third of it. I bought it anyway.

Couscous and North Africa

The cous cous di pesce is the thing to eat in Trapani. It arrives in a wide bowl with a broth poured over semolina and a mix of whatever white fish and shellfish was in the market that morning. The relationship with North African food is not metaphorical here — it’s direct, historical, and you can taste it. The local version uses coarser semolina than the Moroccan standard and the broth is more concentrated. There is a cous cous festival in San Vito Lo Capo north of Trapani in September that draws cooks from both sides of the Mediterranean.

The Egadi Islands

Trapani is the departure point for the Egadi Islands — Favignana, Levanzo, and Marettimo — three small islands that are among the clearest water in the Mediterranean. Favignana is the most visited and has the ruins of the tuna-processing industry (the mattanza, the bluefin tuna hunt that happened here every spring for centuries, was discontinued in the early 2000s; the old tonnara is now a museum). Marettimo is smaller and quieter and worth the extra ferry time.

I took the fast ferry to Favignana for a day. The water at Cala Rossa — a small inlet on the north coast — is an indecent shade of turquoise and you swim in it feeling like the color is a personal favor.

When to go: May to June for the salt flats and sea without the summer crush. September is excellent for the cous cous festival and for the Egadi Islands when the day-tripper season has calmed. The salt flats are worth visiting any time of year but the pink color is most intense from spring through early autumn.