Page 543 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

INFORMATION: SALEMI

Tourist information There’s a tourist office at the bottom of the hill on Piazza Libertà
(daily: summer 9am–1pm & 4–8pm; winter 9am–1pm & 3–7pm; 0924 981 426),
where buses stop.

Gibellina Nuova

Salemi escaped the earthquake lightly, even though a third of the population had to
abandon their shattered homes. Other towns, like Gibellina, were completely
flattened, and the population moved en masse to a site close to Santa Ninfa, reached

from Salemi along the SS188. This is GIBELLINA NUOVA, a modern town that was
once a symbol of progress in the region, its wide, empty streets adorned with
numerous weird constructions and abstract sculptures designed by a handful of
iconoclastic architects with big budgets. A vast stainless-steel star straddles the
motorway where you exit for Gibellina, while elsewhere the town holds huge white
spheres, giant ploughs, snails and much besides – some fifty constructions in all,

though many of them are crumbling already (one church collapsed in 1994), and many
of the designs themselves are embarrassingly frozen in the image of what appeared
futuristic in the 1970s. The town, meanwhile, bakes in the summer sun, since all the
modern piazzas are vast concrete spaces with little shade.

You can get a taste of what Gibellina is all about by driving to the main square –
Piazza XV Gennaio 1968, in case there was any doubt about what’s to blame for all

this – where the arcaded City Hall is fronted by some particularly abstract examples,
and the tall Torre Belice clocktower chimes four times a day with taped human voices
instead of bells, a reminder of the earthquake victims.

Baglio di Stéfano

Museums Tues–Sun 9am–1pm & 3–6pm • €5 combined ticket • 0924 67 844, orestiadi.it

The cultural centre, Baglio di Stéfano, to the east of the centre, is home to a couple of
good museums, one containing contemporary art – mainly works by Italian painters,
but the sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro is also represented – the other, more gripping,
dedicated to Mediterranean culture, from Spain to Turkey and from Corsica to

Africa, taking in costumes, jewellery, ceramics, tapestries, calligraphy and carpets, all
beautifully presented. A separate space here, the Atelier, holds pieces donated by the
various sculptors and designers who contributed to Gibellina Nuova’s townscape.

The Baglio di Stéfano complex also holds a theatre, which is the main venue for the
Orestiadi, a series of classical and modern dramas, concerts and events performed

almost nightly every July and August. As well as works by Euripides, Sophocles and
others, there are modern interpretations by the likes of Jean Cocteau, Stravinsky and