Prestel - 50 Great Adventures

Extraordinary Places and the People who Built them. Sicily - Jonathan Lee

He tackled the Mafia, had a decade-long fight with the Sicilian authorities, and was arrested and fined – all in the name of art. It’s no wonder Antonio Presti’s “museum hotel” is no ordinary stay.

Antonio Presti (1957) founder of Sicily’s Atelier sul Mare.  Art rooms include Sogni tra Segni (Dreams between signs), Il Nido (the Nest), and La Stanza del Profeta (the Room of the Prophet).

Atelier sul Mare sits innocuously at the edge of the beach at Castel di Tusa, a small fishing village on Sicily’s rugged northern coast. It boasts the usual Mediterranean white washed walls and flower-scented terraces, but step inside and you will find a bar covered in graffiti, a giant kiln for would-be potters, and the hotel’s prime attractions – 14 bizarre rooms, each designed by a leading artist. The hotel is Antonio Presti’s manifesto for art – a spirited elbow in the ribs to those who dismiss modern art after just a cursory glance. The Italian believes that we should live with art. Better still, we should actually live in it, and even become part of the work itself.

Presti’s love affair with art started in the 1980’s, when he ploughed the family cement fortune into a series of controversial sculputers. The Fiumara d’Arte [“River of Art”] project snakes along the coast and between Sicily’s Nebrodi and Madonie mountains. Despite run-ins with the Mafia, fines and court orders to remove the works, this open-air museum is still standing, and sculptors now come from all over the world to contribute.

Atelier sul Mare represents Presti’s bid for a quieter life, but there are inevitably plenty of surprises. The hotel’s Room of the Prophet is not for the fainthearted: Turn the key and the heavy steel door crashes to the floor guaranteeing an explosive entrance every time. The suite is an unnerving tribute to writer Pier Paolo Pasolini: a straw and mud corridor evokes the writer’s

favourite country of Yemen, while the bathroom’s tangled weave of copper pipes are redolent of his tragic death in a car crash. Then there’s Earth and Fire, with walls made entirely of shards of terracotta, or The Nest with its giant bed eyrie. Water is a dominant theme throughout the hotel, so if you are keen of a truly relaxing stay go for the Shadow’s Silhouette, with its raft bed terrace bathtub and views of boats scudding across the Tyrrhenian Sea.

HOW TO GET THERE: The nearest airports are Palermo, 90 minutes away by car, and Catania, two hours’ drive away. The hotel is well signposted on the coast road, but you will need to turn off sharply under the railway lines towards the sea to reach the beachfront where the hotel is located. If you are travelling by train, head for Santo Stefano di Camastra, and take a local train to Castel di Tusa from there.

ATELIER SUL MARE

Via Cesare Battisti

4 Castel di Tusa

Messina

Sicily

Tel: +39 0921 334 295

Email: ateliersulmare@interfree.it

www.ateliersulmare.it

Rassegna Stampa

Credits:
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2003@yahoo.it