Tonnara Florio

Tonnara Florio stands on the shore at Arenella, once a small fishing village at the foot of Monte Pellegrino. Fishing boats still lie in this calm bay, and you look out over the Gulf of Palermo. The remains of the old tuna works line the water. The Palazzina Quattro Pizzi, a small neo-Gothic stone palace with four turrets, crowns the site.

Vincenzo Florio Senior bought the tonnara in 1830 and handed the rebuild to his friend, the architect Carlo Giachery. Giachery had worked mostly on practical buildings before, and his neo-Gothic design gave the site its distinctive look. The family had come from Calabria and built an empire of shipbuilding, sulphur mining, banking, ceramics, luxury hotels and Marsala wine. They preserved tuna in olive oil instead of drying it in salt, a first that carried their name to international markets. Beyond the fish, they raised the Villa Igiea, now a hotel, and helped shape modern tourism in Sicily.

By the century's end Palermo drew fashionable Europe, and Ignazio Florio and his wife Franca held court at the palazzina. Guests included royalty, heads of state and cultural figures. A story, never verified, holds that the Tsarina of Russia had a copy of the building raised in Saint Petersburg. Vincenzo, Ignazio's younger brother, later lived here with his second wife and founded the Targa Florio motor race in the Madonie. The works closed in the early twentieth century when the tuna changed their migration routes and grew scarce in these waters. Concerts, conferences, a restaurant and a pizzeria now fill the old buildings, and the turrets still watch over the water.