Dancing Satyr Museum

A remarkable ancient Greek bronze pulled from the sea in 1998

The Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo is one of the most electrifying objects in Sicilian archaeology. The figure — a Dionysian satyr caught mid-whirl, head thrown back, one arm raised in ecstasy — is displayed in a specially converted former church, the Convento di San Egidio, where the lighting and isolation give it the attention it deserves.

The statue is fragmentary: the left arm, left leg and tail are missing, but the torso and the swirling pose are more than enough. The quality of the bronze-casting is extraordinary. Whether or not it is truly by Praxiteles, it is an object of rare power, and the museum is small enough that you can spend a long time in front of it.

things to do museum
A story
The Dancing Satyr was hauled up in the nets of a fishing boat in 1998, some 500 metres underwater in the Strait of Sicily. The fishermen initially thought they had caught a body. The bronze — dated to the 4th–2nd century BC and attributed by some scholars to the school of Praxiteles — had spent over two millennia on the seabed. A second fragment (the right leg) was recovered the following year.