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Isole Egadi |
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Isole Egadi -
Favignana - Levanzo - Marettimo |
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Favignana
Giuseppe Tomasi from Lampedusa, the author
of the famous "Gattopardo", when he was child, came
in Favignana with his parents to visit the Florio' family.
The writer remembers that, in the morning, the awakening happened
with a blow on the eyes with a drenched sponge wiht fresh
water. They were the last fires of the great family that in
this island had made to construct a big "tonnara",
so imposing to make astonish the wolfs of the sea, more than
of the view of the marvellous beauty of Mrs. Franca Florio,
sung, and wished, even from the "divine" writer
D'Annunzio. Today the " Florio's factory " is only
industrial archaeology, and in the palace there's now the
Town hall of Favignana. This is the world, so step by step
the history goes, that here it has ancient traces and something
lasts in the premises eyes, in the young people movenze, in
the games of the children.
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This island look like a butterfly.
A tired butterfly with explained wings trustingly on sea waiting
to Fly. But all here now is petrified. Like the history and the
memory. All the things has a stone aspect, like a rock. For this
reason, in this island, until a few time ago, like in the volcanic
Aeolian islands, the prisoners were deported. The Bourbon prisons
of Favignana had a terrible reputation. The castle of Saint Giacomo
was called the "Force" and with the castle of Saint Caterina
shared horrors and the impossible dreams of escape. More than an
escape dream, I chased a suggestion, in a spring day when, stoically,
I decided to go along all this island, having a walk: from East
to the West, nine kilometers, as it is known, from "Punta Marsala"
to "Punta Sottile". Those poor plants, ended down here,
expressed happiness, strucked by a wind that wants to uproot them.
How many colours between the sky and sea, those thistles, those
daisies, those capers. And it's a relief, after to see much calcareous
coves and cliffs, to abandon itself to listen the voice of people
talking in the little square "Agorà".
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Levanzo
Ten thousand years before Christ, Levanzo and Favignana weren't
islands, but the extreme western ramification of Sicily, full
of population and populated by animals, today disappeared.
Then, there were the geologic smashes and the forming of islands
and atolls. Levanzo, that today seem us like a very small
promised earth, protected from the progress, a lot of time
ago was rich of forests, in which lived the deer. We wouldn't
believe it if some prehistoric graffiti weren't there, in
one of its cave lapping from the sea, to demonstrate it, to
tell it. Those primitives designs tell us about archaic divinatory
sacrifices, of begun rituals and dark magic. The man has always
lived in the caves, here in Levanzo, until the slid century,
when someone risked the first houses in brick. In winter in
Levanzo lives not more than three hundred inhabitants; in
summer instead there are about one thousands inhabitants.
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Here not there would be place for others people
in the little hotels, in the B&B and in the holiday houses,
where, like in all the islands in Sicily and in Greece, most foreigns
finds a place to sleep. This is why in Levanzo, you have the impression
to have the bath alone, everyone with own group of family or friends.
There are many little coves where you can spend memorable days.
But do attention, you have to respect the atmosphere: you can't
have the bath, can't make a pic-nic or can't make underwater peach,
every where. You come in Levanzo to trust yourself to the nature;
and to hear the silence, emphasized by the cicale chirp, in the
summer afternoons, that seem to catch fire themselves. Here survive
the euphorbia, the heaths, the prickly pear and the agaves.
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Marettimo
At the end we are all sure, tourists
and inhabitants of the islands: it was good for these cliffs,
populated by few inhabitants, to don't be involve, until
it have been able, by the crowded Mediterranean tours. The
result is here, in front of this sea, between these small
white houses, where the time doesn't have haste but human
synchronies with the night and the day, the sun and the
moon, the winds and the tides.
Marettimo is reach of vegetations in fact it is the island
with most vegetaton in the Trapani provice. It is famous
to be the last island that doesn't have a lot of structure
in cement that instead in other parts of Sicily disfigure
the view
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In Marettimo there aren't comfortable hotels and equiped tourist
villages, but in compensation, is impossible the use of the cars,
so you can hear the silence that only the noise of the sea and of
the wind, dare to defy. A lot of things has been conserved, in Marettimo.
Not all is understood. The "Foca Monaca" (kind of seal)
is extinct and some kind of rapacious too. For this reason the naturalists
don't lower the flag, infact they ploughing these seas to hunting
the transgressor
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The four hundred inhabitants of Levanzo are helped
from the foreigns, like a man of Milan that has carried in the island,
about twenty years ago, some couples of Moufflon. Now these animals
feel like home, even if some years ago, they lived only on the Corsica
and Sardegna's mountains.
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