Augusta

Frederick II founded it in 1232 and gave it an imperial name, Augusta Veneranda, peopling it — so they say — with folk deported from Montalbano and Centuripe, and putting a castle above them to make his meaning plain. A little further off lay the ruins of Megara Hyblaea, the Doric colony that produced Epicharmus, the first comic playwright of the West. The island the historic centre stands on, though, is artificial: in the sixteenth century the Spanish cut through the isthmus, and ever since Augusta is reached by two bridges, one of which opens in the Porta Spagnola.

The seventeenth century was rich for an unexpected reason: the Knights of Malta built a great oven here for ship's biscuit. Then, on 9 and 11 January 1693, the earthquake levelled everything, and the town rebuilt itself in late baroque like the others of the Val di Noto. Frederick's castle, meanwhile, became a penitentiary in 1890. Outside the town stands a concrete giant: the airship hangar, begun during the Great War and finished after it ended, more than a hundred metres long and thirty-seven high — five years later the age of airships was already over. Where the Borgata is today there were vast salt pans, which in the thirteenth century had this area called «maremortum»: now they are a WWF reserve. Then, in 1949, came the first refinery, and behind it all the others. The natural harbour is still among the largest in the Mediterranean; the hamlet of Brucoli, with its canal-port, is the other face.