In 1582 seven Turkish galleys tried to land on the coast of Acireale and were driven off by the people who ran down to meet them. The fright was enough: the city decided to equip itself with a system of defence, and among the works the Spanish built on the Timpa was this fortress, which watches the sea from a balcony of lava.
What to see
The design is by Camillo Camilliani, the engineer who surveyed and redrew the coastal towers of the whole of Sicily; the building, which ran from the end of the sixteenth century into the first decades of the next, was overseen by an engineer from Acireale nicknamed Porcellana. The plan is irregular, fitted to the rock, and the enlargement works were carried out partly by men sentenced to hard labour.
The fort was not there to fight: it was there to warn. It housed a large cannon that fired a shot at every sighting of pirate ships, and that boom along the coast was the signal to get the families to safety. Only once did it make war in earnest, in 1675, shelling the French fleet during the war between France and Spain.
Visiting
The fortress is on the Timpa of Santa Maria La Scala, inside the nature reserve; you get there on foot by the paths, with a climb and uneven ground, and the interior is not always accessible. An hour there and back.
Our editors' tip
Lean out and look down, where the fishing village rests against the water. That is why the fortress exists: it defended no prince and no palace, but the boats and the houses you can see from here. The cannon shot had to arrive before the sails did.