Driving directly north, Etna fades away and the giant Madonie mountains appear like a chain of granite bouncers protecting the Tyrrhenian coast. Castel di Tusa is a seaside resort with a difference. Right on the sweeping, elegant bay, next to the pebble beach, is L'Atelier sul Mare, a "hotel-museum" of contemporary art owned by Antonio Presti. It's a hotel because there are 40 bedrooms, and it's a museum because 15 of the rooms (they are currently installing three more) are unique art spaces designed by artists from around the world.
The first night we stayed in Il Nido (The Nest), a round, enclosed bed complete with "feather"-covered duvet. Then we were packing our bags and moving down the corridor to the Energia, where the red lighting shimmers to the sound of the waves on the beach. Even the showers are art statements. There's a waterfall in one room, and in another a walk-in car wash (Presti's own homage to film maker Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was killed by a car).
Presti is a one-man art movement. As well as his hotel, he presides over a sculpture park that stretches from the sea up into the mountains. The local council hate him, and the mafia bombed his hotel, but he won't stop.
In between sleeping with art, we spent a day in Cefalu, a town that is impossible to dislike. A long, sandy beach curves for a couple of miles away from a medieval town built under an enormous rock outcrop. There's a dramatic Norman cathedral (built by Roger I in 1131. Nice one, Roger) with a palm-fringed piazza, a labyrinth of steep Arab/Norman alleys, a Saracen wash-house, stupendous views along the coast, and the Trappitu restaurant, where you eat oysters the size of cricket balls and clams the size of oysters on a terrace overlooking the sea.
All that was left was the drive to Palermo airport.
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