Mazara del Vallo has Italy's largest fishing fleet, and the harbour is a working, pungent, perpetually busy place quite unlike the polished marinas of more tourist-oriented Sicilian towns. Dozens of trawlers — many crewed by Tunisian fishermen who have settled here over the generations — line the Mazaro river mouth, which cuts through the centre of town.
Early mornings and late afternoons are the best times to visit, when the boats come and go and fish are unloaded on the dock. It is an honest, unglamorous scene that speaks to the town's economic reality: fishing is its livelihood, Tunisia is its cultural twin 90 miles across the water, and the sea gives and takes in roughly equal measure. The 1998 discovery of the Dancing Satyr in these very waters has added an extra layer to the harbour's story.