Magazine

Leonardo Sciascia recounts that once upon a time, in old Sicilian houses, there was a special room called 'la camera dello scirocco' (the Sirocco room): a place without windows and without any communication with the outside world - except for a narrow door opening onto an internal corridor - in which the noble family would take refuge in search of some coolness against the hot, humid wind 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, when everything seems to stop to let itself be completely lulled by Sicilian symphonies: the harmony of the waves of the sea, the song of the cicadas in the open countryside, the breeze of the wind that blows from the horizon and moves the golden sand. These lines, which you are now reading, thus bring together all the art-soaked contexts that celebrate and are an active part of the uniqueness of our land. Suruq promotes characters, places, restaurants, experiences that with their presence still make the territory of Syracuse, Val di Noto and Marzamemi a fascinating destination where the Sirocco has crept in and left its mark.