Sciacca, excellence from history

On the western coast of Sicily in the province of Agrigento, 62 kilometers west of the capital, bordered to the east by Mount Kronio and to the west by Capo San Marco, rises Sciacca, a town of almost 39,000 inhabitants, a reference point for maritime and tourist activities. and spas. Inhabited since prehistoric times, as confirmed by some findings in rocky areas, the village began to take on a defined conformation under the influences of the different ethnic groups that settled there over time, such as the Phoenician-Punic and Carthaginian ones and, in the medieval period, the Arab and Norman ones. The result is a city in which a thousand cultures, uses and customs are intertwined, which are reflected in the variegated architecture of the historic center and in the multifaceted activities that characterize it every day. The historical testimonies are innumerable, from Palazzo Steripinto, a sixteenth-century building in late Gothic-Renaissance style with a boss façade, that is, made up of blocks of stone cut in a diamond point, to the Cathedral of SS. Maria del Soccorso, built in 1100 in Norman style with a façade redone in 1600 in Baroque style, to the Church of San Domenico from 1100, in Baroque style annexed to the convent of the same name. The city is internationally known for the work of the Master Ceramists who reproduce real masterpieces in majolica using the ancient procedures of working on the lathe and manual decorations that, born in the Neolithic, handed down from father to son, have found their maximum splendor in Renaissance and Baroque era. Like any village born and developed on the sea, one of Sciacca's flagship activities is the craft shipbuilding carried out over the centuries by the succession of generations of skilled shipwrights capable of making jewels that for fishing, trade or pleasure plow daily the crystalline waters of the surrounding sea.