Church of San Giorgio

The pink-and-cream church of San Giorgio sits at the very tip of Tellaro's promontory, its apse hanging directly over the sea. Built in the thirteenth century and rebuilt in the sixteenth after a pirate raid, it is the postcard image of the village — and the photograph everyone takes from the rocks to the south.

Inside it is plain and small, with a single nave and a quiet seventeenth-century bronze of the saint slaying his dragon. Step outside again and walk around the building: the path drops onto a tiny terrace where waves break a few metres below your feet. In rough weather the spray reaches the church walls.

things to do sight
A story
Local legend says that on a stormy night in the sixteenth century, a giant octopus climbed the rocks below the church, wrapped a tentacle around the bell rope, and rang the bells loud enough to wake the village just as Saracen pirates were landing on the rocks below.