Italian owner hopes Elon Musk can save heritage of ‘Turkish Steps’
SCALA dei Turchi, the famous cascading limestone cliff on the Italian island of Sicily, may not be the obvious choice for the world’s richest man’s next takeover bid, but an Italian man dreams of such a possibility, and the owner of the area, who wants Elon Musk to buy part of the Turkish Steps, made such a call.
Scala dei Turchi, meaning the Stair of the Turks or the Turkish Steps in Sicily, one of the most important touristic places in the country and included in the UNESCO World Heritage list, have been harmed for years due to neglect, and the Italian owner of the natural stairs, Ferdinando Sciabarra, now thinks the solution might be to sell the famous historical site to Musk after he couldn’t get the help he desired from the authorities. After a long legal battle with the local government in Realmonte, Agrigento, and after years of complaints about the maintenance of the stairs, the cliff’s official owner, Sciabarra, 72, put the space up for sale.
Sciabarra, who thinks that the richest person in the world will take good care of the Turkish Steps, has not yet received a response from Musk.
The Turkish Steps are among the most visited tourist attractions in Italy. The historical region is on the
UNESCO World Heritage List and has become a tourist attraction, partly due to its frequent mention in famous literary writer Andrea Camilleri’s series of detective stories about Commissario Montalbano.
In August 2007, the municipality of Realmonte applied for the inclusion of the Scala dei Turchi – together with the nearby Roman Villa Aurea – in the UNESCO Heritage List.
The Scala consists of marl, a sedimentary rock with a characteristic white color, formed from the tests of planktonic foraminifera. They belong to the Trubi Formation, a marine sedimentary unit of the Lower Pliocene – Zanclean – age, which was deposited after the Zanclean flood, in which the Mediterranean refilled after having previously evaporated during the Messinian salinity crisis.
The cliffs lie between two sandy beaches and are a limestone rock formation in the shape of a staircase, hence the name.
The latter part of the name derives from the frequent pirate raids by the Saracens during the Middle Ages and Barbary pirates and Ottoman corsairs and, by convention, Turks during the Early modern period; the Turkish pirates, in fact, found shelter in this area less beaten by the winds and represented a safer landing and boarding place.
On the other hand, Sciabarra, who previously worked for the local chamber of commerce, laid out his claim to ownership based on 19th-century heritage documents. His share of the cliff was given back after an investigation was opened for occupying stateowned land.
Sciabarra said he is now putting the stairs up for auction after local and regional authorities’ requests to introduce measures to better protect the Turkish Steps or turn them into a nature reserve were rejected.
“It wasn’t even enough to say: ’we will gift you the site,’” Sciabarra told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “We got promises, but nothing else. Now, after a year, and with being worried about what looks like being another summer surge of tourists on the Scala, we are putting it up for auction, appealing first to Elon Musk.”
On the other hand, the cliff in the form of a giant staircase stretching from the Southern Sicilian coast to the Mediterranean has been eroded by the influx of a high number of tourists. Others stole rocks made of the soft white limestone.
In February 2020, following years of complaints about the poor environmental protection of the site from erosion and vandalism by tourists, Italian prosecutors seized control of the site. They ordered its temporary closure for monitoring and announced that they were investigating Sciabbara, who received a fine of 9,100 euros ($9,577) for crimes related to the cliff ’s protection.
In January 2022, the site was stained red by vandals with red iron oxide dust. “We wanted to donate it to the public administration, which remains ‘deaf,’ we were also prevented from entrusting it to an environmental association,” Sciabarra’s daughter, Angela, told Corriere. “Tourists should be allowed to visit safely with controlled access, and not via easily bypassable fences. Rockfall also needs to be prevented.”