Walking Tour: Mazara del Vallo, Trapani, Sicilia

Mazara del Vallo, in the province of Trapani, succeeds in summing up the character and history of an entire island: it proudly shows the world its splendid historic centre, the Casbah where Islamic philosophers and men of letters, judges and merchants walked.

The Casbah, an ancient Arab quarter, is home to many houses in the typical style of the period and is criss-crossed by an endless series of small passageways. The neighbourhood is inhabited by a large Tunisian community, which helps to maintain the overall style of the district with tiles and other decorative elements on the facades of the houses.

Inside the Casbah, there are many restaurants and typical taverns offering traditional city dishes, starting with fish couscous. The flavours and smells wafting through the narrow streets of the Casbah are those of a thousand-year-old tradition that has never been interrupted in Mazara del Vallo, one of the cities in southern Italy closest to Africa.