Page 451 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

(if you’re lucky) the eccentric fish trattoria so beloved of Montalbano.

THE MONTALBANO PHENOMENON

Inspector Salvo Montalbano is the most famous policeman in Italy, and his creator,

Andrea Camilleri, a chain-smoking octogenarian native of Porto Empedocle, is the
country’s most successful writer. The Montalbano books – twenty novels and four
collections of short stories – have sold well over eleven million copies in Italy,
while episodes of the Montalbano TV series regularly attract an astonishing nine
million viewers here. Montalbano fever is fast becoming an international
phenomenon, too. The TV series has been broadcast in fifty countries, including the
UK and Australia; The Potter’s Field, the latest Montalbano novel to be translated

into English, won the UK Crime Writers’ Association International Dagger award in
2012; and intriguingly, Police HQ Scotland Yard in London recently requested
copies of the entire TV series for use in “professional training courses”.

A very human policeman, Montalbano lives on a beach, begins every morning with
a swim, savours what he eats in silence with an almost religious passion, and suffers
from bad digestion. Although the setting for the novels is contemporary, the core of
Montalbano’s world remains the provincial Sicily of Camilleri’s youth, a fictional

place in which elements of modern life, such as the mobile phone and computer, can
at times seem anachronistic.

When it came to filming the TV series, however, director Alberto Sironi decided to
re-create Camilleri’s Sicily not in Agrigento, but in the province of Ragusa, perhaps
because Agrigento and Porto Empedocle were deemed a little too real for the tastes
of TV viewers. Mentioned here are locations in Agrigento and Porto Empedocle that

you could easily visit yourself, though keen Montalbano fans are unlikely to regret
splashing out on a guided tour of the sites with Michele Gallo ( 360 397 930,
sicilytourguides.net); group prices start at €150 for a half-day tour.

MONTALBANO LOCATIONS

Questura The Police Headquarters (and base of the irascible Commissioner Bonetti

Algheretti and his odious assistant Lattes) is in fact Agrigento’s police station, on
Piazza Municipio at the beginning of Via Atenea.

Rabato Semi-destroyed by a landslide, Agrigento’s Arab quarter, just to the north of
Via Garibaldi, serves as the home of Montelusa lowlifes including the Tunisian
prostitute mother of Montalbano’s almost-adopted son.

La Mannara The car park and abandoned factory used as a base by Gigi and his
prostitutes lie behind the ENI, at the edge of Porto Empedocle on the road to

Agrigento.