HISTORY OF AN ENCHANTED VILLAGE.
Marzamemi is a fishing village distant from Pachino about 3 km of which it is a fraction for half and the other of Noto in the province of Syracuse. The origin of the name is uncertain, some scholars claim that it derives from the Arabic word "Marsà al hamen" which means Baia delle Tortore, as the area is an obligatory place to pass small birds during migration.
Some derive it from Marza-Porto, Memi-Piccolo: Piccolo Porto. The village is washed by the Ionian sea and the level is lower than the sea. On the Ionian Sea, you meet the two islets of Marzamemi: the small, on which stands an elegant cottage, owned by the family of Prof. R. Brancati and the large, which forms a curve of entry into the recent port formed by the same islet and by a concrete wall arm, which extends into the sea.
The inhabitants of the village were all devoted to fishing, Marzamemi was already well known, since the mid-1600s for the tonnara, which after that of Favignana (Trapani) was the most important in Sicily. The inhabitants who lived permanently in the village of Marzamemi were all dedicated to fishing and boat building and were all from the cities of Syracuse or from nearby Avola, which reflect the city's costume, kind, cheerful and warmly religious.
Marzamemi is as old as the tonnara, it was a Regia tonnara erected under Spanish rule that in 1642 was sold to the Baroni Calascibetta of Piazza Armerina. In 1752 were built the palace of the Prince, the church dedicated to the Madonna del Carmelo and the fishermen's houses. At the end of the 18th century, the tonnara was sold to the Nicolaci di Noto family, formerly the gabellotes of the Baroni Calascibetta.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the tonnara of Marzamemi was considered the best among those returning from the kingdom (they say back the tuna traps that intercept the herds of tunas that "return" to the south after having crossed the seas to the north, as the Tyrrhenian Sea ). At the end of the century there was a curious struggle for the primacy in the catch with Baron Pietro di Belmonte, owner of the nearby tonnara of Capo Passero. Since then it was a continuous decline in activities; over time many of the premises were used for the salting of blue fish of small craft enterprises, until the complete abandonment of the factories, which at the beginning of the new millennium appeared in very degraded conditions. In the last fifteen years they have been reconverted into tourist accommodation. With the birth of Pachino, in 1760, by Gaetano Starrabba, prince of Giardinelli, the tonnara ceased to be the only economic resource of the area and Marzamemi became the port from which the products of the earth started, first the cotton and then the must, species, before the construction of the Pachino-Marzamemi-Noto-Avola-Syracuse railway.
THE NEW TUNA WORKING CENTER.
In 1912 a factory was built in Marzamemi for processing salted tuna and then tuna with oil. The fishing of the tonnara was abundant until 1951, in 1952 the Rasiom of Augusta came into operation and the significant decline in fishing began in all the seven tuna tanks: Santa Panagia - Terruzza - Fontane Bianche - Avola - Bafuto Vendicari - Marzamemi and Capo I will pass.
MOVIES IN MARZAMEMI.
Sud, by Gabriele Salvatore
Oltremare non è l’America, by Nello Correale
L’uomo delle Stelle, by Giuseppe Tornatore
Kaos, by brothers Taviani
Il commissario Montalbano, by Andrea Camilleri
Mario e il mago, by Klaus Maria Brandauer
Cuore Scatenato, by Gianluca Sodaro
L’Iguana, by Catherine McGilvray
I fantasmi di Portopalo, with Beppe Fiorello
"Immaturi"-La serie, with Luca Bizzarri and Paolo Kessisoglu
Aenne Burda, by Franziska Meletzky
