Page 459 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

The upper town

The still-walled upper town can be entered through any of the three grand gates
remaining of the original seven. The westernmost, Porta San Salvatore, leads onto

the Chiesa del Carmine, whose facade is lent a skew-whiff air by an off-centre
Gothic rose window. Past the church, up Via P. Gerardi, the fifteenth-century Palazzo
Steripinto is even more ungainly, its embossed exterior only partially offset by some
slender arched windows.

From Palazzo Steripinto, the main Corso Vittorio Emanuele runs right the way

down to the lovely Piazza A. Scandaliato, a large terrace with some good cafés,
enhanced by wide views over the port and distant bays. The most enduring Arab
legacy in town is the street layout and, back from the piazza, above the Duomo, a
Moorish knot of passages and steep alleys leads up to the rather feeble remains of the
fourteenth-century Castello Conti Luna, which belonged to one of the feuding
families that disrupted medieval Sciacca. A little way down from here, the twelfth-

century church of San Nicolò is a tiny construction with three apses and some elegant
blind arcading.

The port

Steps from Piazza A. Scandaliato lead down the cliffside to the lower town and port,

whose most distinctive feature is the hexagonally steepled modern church of San
Pietro. Just north of the church you’ll see further steps, each riser decorated with
contemporary ceramic tiles, some depicting sea life, some just patterned, and each one
different. Fishing vessels lie tied up at the quayside, lorries unload salt by the
bucketful for anchovy- and sardine-processing, and repairmen, foundry workers and
chandlers go about their business, breaking off work for a drink in some scruffy

portside bar.