Mia casa, tua casa... Montalbano’s Sicily
Last night I was in Sicily. And no, that doesn’t mean I flew into Palermo or Trapani yesterday. What it does mean, though, is that Montalbano is back! Inspector Salvo Montalbano, that is, the surly, sexy detective, and a man who is always full of surprises. Created in print by Andrea Camillieri many years ago and brought to the screen over the last decade by BBC Four, it’s addictive viewing, not just for the on-screen presence of Montalbano himself, but for all the small-town minutiae that so defines the location. It’s not ‘stage’ Sicilian at all. It’s just believably Sicilian.
So it’s not one of those programmes that are set in, say, inland Spain, but filmed in Croatia or Italy. What you get with Montalbano is the real McCoy. The names of the towns might be fictional but the landscape, the town squares, the churches, the landmarks - they all exist in Sicily.
The fictional town of Vigata where the series is set is inspired by writer Camillieri’s home town of Porto Empedocle, but a great deal of the Vigata that you see is actually shot in Ragusa (like Montalbano’s favourite restaurant, Trattoria Calogero) while some of the other featured landmarks (the police station, for example) are in Scicli.
Montalbano lives in fictional Marinella, in a house right on the sea. This is filmed in Punta Secca near Ragusa but so famous is Montalbano’s house these days that it is now a bed and breakfast. The name? Casa di Montalbano.
Doubtless, the Montalbano books and television programmes (there was a Young Montalbano series as well) have all done their bit for Sicilian tourism, bringing more visitors to this south-eastern end of the island than would have been the norm. It’s not overrun there though - I’d imagine that the BBC Four series still has a relatively niche appeal. (Subtitles on a Saturday night at 9pm aren’t for everyone.)
What it does for me is to transport me to Sicily, an island that I certainly don’t know like the back of my hand, but one that I have visited and which I really love.
September is a lovely time to go there. I say that despite the fact that when we were last there we had some fairly horrendous September storms. Simply freak weather conditions that particular year, leaving the locals as astonished as we were.
Based in Cefalu along the northern coast, we drove (not for the faint-hearted on Sicily!) all over the place. One especially lovely memory is of the day we drove inland to Palazzo Adriano - the town that featured in the beautiful Cinema Paradiso. It’s hard to believe that that film will be 30 years old next year.
Palazzo Adriano that September afternoon had a real backwater atmosphere, with a few locals hanging out in the square, sizing us up as we parked and got out to wander around the town. We loved the place so much that we took a snap decision to stay the night but when we pitched up to a lovely-looking guest house/ small hotel just off the square, we discovered that it was closed. In September!
The other Sicilian joy for me has always been Palermo. A bit like a smaller version of Naples (which I also love), it’s exciting, and crumbly, and chaotic and just a bit edgy. It’s also a place where things are often never quite as they seem. As we headed to the station the last time I was there (warning: don’t drive in Palermo!) to catch the train back to Cefalu I spotted a devastatingly handsome man standing on a street corner. Tall, dark, dressed in a chic black suit and with wraparound shades completing the George Clooney image, he was muttering conspiratorily to a rough-looking man beside him. ‘Mmm... Mafia,’ I said to the husband, buying right into the whole stage-Sicilian vibe. He laughed. ‘Look closer,’ he said. It was then I spotted the ‘collar’. George Clooney was a priest. But that’s Sicily for you - always surprising. Just like Montalbano himself.