Magazine

Leonardo Sciascia tells us that once, inside old Sicilian houses, there was a special room called “the scirocco room”: a place without windows and without any communication with the outside – except for a narrow door opening onto an internal corridor – where the noble family would take refuge in search of some coolness against the hot and humid wind coming from Libya.

Sciascia didn’t believe that this room could really protect people: “before it is felt in the air, the sirocco has already reached the temples, the knees” he wrote. One cannot resist the wind blowing from the southeast. Movement becomes impossible, every attempt is futile: the scirocco (from the Arabic "Suruq") forces contemplation and people can do nothing but yield it. Centuries ago, to escape the scorching heat, they sought shelter in places that, due to their structure, were also outside of historical time. In this timelessness, there are resonances with the present, because the scirocco room is still an expression of a particular dimension of Sicily. Whoever arrives in our land for the first time finds themselves immersed in a suspended atmosphere: here epochs overlap, signs of various dominations and influences converge, nature and history seem to have loved each other since the dawn of time, myth and legend blend with religious beliefs.

Suruq evokes this moment of pause, where everything seems to stop to be completely lulled by Sicilian symphonies: the sound of the sea waves, the song of cicadas in the open countryside, the breeze of the wind blowing from the horizon and moving the golden sand. These lines, which you are now reading, gather all the art-infused contexts that celebrate and actively contribute to the uniqueness of our land. Suruq promotes characters, places, restaurants, experiences that with their presence still make the territory of Siracusa, the Val di Noto and Marzamemi a fascinating destination where the scirocco has permeated and left its mark.