Egadi boat charter
Seven days
EGADI ISLANDS AND THE FLORIO COAST
The story
On 10 March 241 BC, off Levanzo, two hundred Roman ships ended the First Punic War: the bronze rams recovered from the seabed are now in the Stabilimento Florio on Favignana. The tonnara (tuna fishery) was born in 1859 and Ignazio Florio made it the most modern in the Mediterranean (1891): the mattanza, led by the rais, lasted until 2007. The Egadi are Europe's largest marine protected area; on the coast, Marsala is the wine that the Englishmen Woodhouse and Ingham, and then the Florios, carried around the world.
Favignana
See: the Ex Stabilimento Florio, a museum since 2009; the tufa quarries turned into sunken gardens of fig and citrus trees; Cala Rossa and Cala Azzurra from the anchor. Eat: tuna in all its cuts — bottarga, ventresca, lattume, ficazza — and busiate with pesto trapanese.
Levanzo
See: the Grotta del Genovese: Upper Palaeolithic engravings of deer and human figures, and Neolithic paintings (guided visit, book 48 hours ahead). In the water: Cala Minnola and the 1st-century BC Roman wreck, amphorae at 27 metres.
Marettimo
See: the sea caves by tender (Cammello, Tuono, Presepe), the Case Romane, the castle of Punta Troia on its Saracen tower, the white car-free village. Eat: lobster and fish soup with the fishermen.
The coast
San Vito Lo Capo and its fish cous cous (Cous Cous Fest in September); the Riserva dello Zingaro, 7 km of coves; Scopello and its tonnara; Erice by cable car and Maria Grammatico's genovesi pastries; Marsala: the Florio, Donnafugata and Pellegrino cellars, the salt pans with their windmills, the Phoenician island of Mozia with its marble Youth; Segesta and the temple never finished.
The LUX week in the Egadi Islands
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