Noto and Marzamemi

The old town, called Noto or Netum, lies 5 miles directly north on Mount Alveria. A city of Sicel origin, it was known as Netum in ancient times. In 263 BCE the city was granted to Hieron II by the Romans. According to legend, Daedalus stayed in the city after his flight over the Ionian Sea, as did Hercules after his seventh task. During the Roman era, it opposed the magistrate Verres. In 866 it was conquered by the Arabs, who elevated the city to become a capital of one of the three districts of the island (the Val di Noto). In 1091, it became the last Islamic stronghold in Sicily to fall to the Christians. Later it became a rich Norman city. In 1503 king Ferdinand III granted it the title of "civitas ingeniosa". In the following centuries, the city expanded, growing beyond its
medieval limits, and new buildings, churches and convents were built. These, however, were all totally destroyed by the 1693 Sicilian earthquake. The current town, rebuilt after the earthquake on the left bank of River Asinaro, was planned on a grid system by Giovanni Battista Landolina. The new city occupied a position nearer to the Ionian Sea. The hiring of architects like Rosario Gagliardi to rebuild the city helped make the new Noto a
masterpiece of Sicilian Baroque, dubbed the "Stone Garden" and is currently listed among UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. Many of the newer structures are built of a soft tufa stone, which assume a honey tonality under sunlight. The city, which had lost its provincial capital status in 1817, rebelled against the House of Bourbon on 16 May 1860, leaving its gates open to Giuseppe Garibaldi and his expedition. Five months later, on 21 October, a plebiscite sealed the annexation of Noto to Piedmont. Noto was freed from the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini in July 1943. The people from Noto voted in favor of the monarchy in the referendum of
1946.

The village of Marzamemi was born around its fishing port and has developed thanks to this last activity, still practiced today. It was endowed with a Tonnara which was one of the most important in Sicily. The tonnara of Marzamemi dates back to the time of the Spanish domination in Sicily in 1600 under the reign of Philip IV. In 1752 the construction of the palace, the church of the tonnara and the sailors' houses were completed by the Calascibetta barons. Also the birth of the nearby town of Pachino (1760) gave a new boost to Marzamemi thanks to the construction of the warehouses located along the main street. These storage places were used for wine barrels to be sent by sea in Liguria and in France and to store the over three hundred thousand tons of salt produced by the two salt pans of Marzamemi and a nearby town. In 1843 the owner of the tuna factory died without heirs and the tonnara was inherited by his nephew Giovanna Antonia Calascibetta. The debts accumulated since 1795 involved various legal disputes. This occasion therefore allowed Corrado Nicolaci, prince of  Villadorata, to gradually detect the plant. With the passage of the tonnara from the Calascibetta to the
Nicolaci, the "contemporary history" of Marzamemi begins. At that moment, the seaside village was not yet well connected to the nearby inhabited centers. So it was that the Bourbon Department had the rolling-out
Marzamemi-Pachino (1847-1853) built, with the hope of advancing maritime trade. The new axis, in fact, improved the connection with the port area thus favoring the revival of the economy, which had consequences with the construction in 1855 of the new port (Porto Fossa). In 1912 a tuna processing plant was built in Marzamemi. The fishing of the tonnara was abundant until after the war. In Marzamemi two tuna catchings were carried out every day: one in the morning and one in the early afternoon. Originally there were two chimneys, but the most majestic collapsed on June 12, 1943, a few days before the allied landing, when the tonnara was machine-gunned by the British aviation. The plant in the last period worked on behalf of the fish preservation industry of Angelo Parodi of Genoa, who were specialists in Genoa. The boxes of different sizes, produced in Marzamemi, were marketed under the trademark  "Angelo Parodi Genova - Tuna in pure olive oil - “. The tonnara closed definitively in 1969 and today is there to be admired by travelers and locals coming to stroll around its bulk.